Nature As Literary Metaphor

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In this essay I will look at the use of language and imagery in literary works where nature writing is found. I will examine how authors like Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, John Muir and Emily Dickinson describe nature and how they relate to nature in their works, more specifically if they describe it accurately in a representational way or metaphorically. In my discussion I will apply concepts of Laurence Buell and his “dual accountability” in order to explain the paradoxes found in nature writing. In this essay my main focus will be how the accuracy of nature writing is achieved in different ways. In addition, I will look at how this creates alienation or familiarization, distance or closeness between the reader and nature through the use of anthropomorphisms, personification, gendering and “naturalization”.

Nature’s inexpressibility “Nature” is a very vague concept and is widely used in many contexts, from human nature to brute nature. What is natural and what is unnatural? Herman Melville tried to be very precise in his depiction of nature, more specifically the marine nature, nature at sea, in his monumental Moby Dick. Not only did he attempt to describe sea life in specific detail, but also the whole nature of whaling did he venture to describe in meticulous detail. This attempt to represent nature as truthfully as possible is a problematic one as seen in the following passage from the novel, which could also be regarded as a metaphor for the mysterious feelings we have for nature. It is a relationship with mixed feelings of admiration and hesitant fear of the unknown: Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay

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floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life. (Melville, Moby Dick, “Squid”, 261)

In this passage Melville tries to describe a sea creature identified as a gigantic squid. Interestingly he makes use of words and phrases like “the secret seas”, “innumerable”, “no perceptible face”, “blindly” and “unearthly”. Nature is almost portrayed as something that cannot be described. The “secret seas” possess creatures with no human feature, no firm body but “a vast pulpy mass” with no face and “no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct”. Moreover it seems like this creature of the depths is a “chance-like apparition of life”, it is part of the unpredictability of nature. In its extreme paradoxical sense it appears to be almost “unnatural”, which complicates even further the conception of what nature really is. Henry David Thoreau also finds it difficult to portray nature at Walden Pond accurately to his readers in Walden, although he depicts nature as truthfully as he can throughout. Nevertheless he makes use of anthropomorphisms and religious imagery in order to communicate the beauty of nature to the reader: “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature” (Walden, Chapter 9: “The Ponds”, 1866). Thoreau makes use of anthropomorphic imagery to express the inexpressible. The inexpressibility of nature and the impotency of language are expressed in some of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Language is impotent in describing nature accurately to the reader because of the cultural constructs that bind language. Emily Dickinson arrives at

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this conclusion in her poem “668”: “Nature is what we know/Yet have no art to say/So impotent Our Wisdom is/To Her Simplicity”. Dickinson’s poem expresses frustration because we cannot use language to describe nature in perfect detail due to its insufficient means of representation. Her attempt to make nature familiar through language fails. She can only experience nature accurately through her senses, or intuition. To some extent we can say that nature, or the meaning of it, is inexpressible. Melville and Thoreau would both perhaps agree to this.

The Idea of Accuracy Nevertheless, nature writers do try to communicate their experience with nature in their respective works. Thoreau does it in his detailed description of Walden Pond and Melville through Ishmael in Moby Dick. Melville becomes almost scientific when he lets Ishmael explains the tail of the whale:

The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it: - upper, middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running crosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much as anything else, imparts power to the tail. (Melville, Moby Dick, “The Tail”, 347)

Almost like a marine biologist Melville lets Ishmael cut through the sinews and skin of the whale with words as his tools with a clinical precision in this passage. The accuracy is extreme and Melville makes every layer of the tail “visible” to the reader without using any metaphoric language of any kind. With the precision of a doctor he cuts through the skin in an attempt to portray the workings of the tail, as a pathologist would show how a

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human organ works. Thoreau is rarely as “scientific” but he too attempts to describe nature in the manner of a naturalist: At length the sun’s rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snow banks, and the sun dispersing the mist smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveler picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off. (Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 17: “Spring”, 1927)

Both writers treat accuracy from two different viewpoints in these quotes, both the “scientific” and the “poetic”. Melville presents the seascape with many poetic renderings in Moby Dick and Thoreau displays “scientific” ways of presenting nature, especially in the case of the temperatures of the lake. Lawrence Buell’s coined the expression of “dual accountability” which is applied “to matter and to discursive mentation” (Buell, “Representing the Environment”, 92), where the narrative intention is to describe nature as accurately as possible, but simultaneously construct its meaning or attribute a certain philosophy to it. Buell presents the idea of “dual accountability” as a relation between representation and construction where “literature’s referential dimension” (86), in which emphasis emphasize is on the accuracy of representation, is interconnected with the “poesis, textuality, ideology, the unconscious” (92) of the constructive element in literature. The concern with representational accuracy, then, is found in both Melville’s clinical precision and Thoreau’s poetic portrayal of spring at Walden Pond. Thoreau uses quite neutral words like “warm” and “melt”, but he makes use of anthropomorphisms such as “the sun smiles on a checkered landscape (…) smoking with incense”. Notwithstanding this stylized image, Thoreau both represents and constructs nature because his ambition is

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to “put the reader or viewer in touch with the environment” (Buell, “Representing the Environment”, 97). Basically, when discussing the idea of accuracy in nature writing one needs to take in consideration the idea of “environmental art as a deliberate dislocation of ordinary perception” (104), which essentially serves the purpose of bringing the reader closer to the subject matter of the text.

Anthropomorphism In the works in question the authors often ascribe human characteristics like evil and good to animals and natural phenomena. It is especially interesting how Melville portrays the sharks in Moby Dick. They are presented as malignant creatures with blood thirst and represent the dark side of Darwinism, and may be compared to the way in which Thoreau writes about the brutality of the ants (Walden, Chapter 12: “Brute Neighbors” 1888-). The sharks seem to be presented as embodied evil: They viciously snapped, not only at each other’s disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent around, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed. (Melville, Moby Dick, “The Shark Massacre”, 283)

In this carnage, where sharks flock around a whale corpse that hangs from the ship, nature’s darker sides are depicted with vivid gruesome detail. Melville describes them as vicious, acting in the unrestrained manner of a mob. Furthermore, he writes that there seem to be a “Pantheistic vitality” that lurks “in their very joints and bones”, which could imply that they are part of the unpredictability of nature’s law. We could also observe the amorality of nature in Dickinson’s poem “328” where she describes a bird: “A Bird came

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down the Walk/He did not know I saw/He bit an Angleworm in halves/And ate the fellow, raw” (Dickinson, “328”).

In another passage Melville describes a gigantic sperm whale that “lay rolling in the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror” (“Stubb Kills A Whale”, 266). This use of anthropomorphisms, like “the hull of a frigate” with an “Ethiopian hue” makes the sight of the whale more familiar to us as readers, but how accurate is it? As with the malevolence of the sharks, we can also picture a capsized frigate at sea, but does this image bring us closer to nature? Melville continues to describe the whale as “a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon” (“Stubb Kills A Whale”, 266). This is yet another anthropomorphism of social life used to describe the tranquility of the whale. Such a use of anthropomorphism is very problematic because it may complicate the image we get of the whale. Melville’s use of images like “a frigate” or “a portly burgher smoking his pipe” could distract and alienate the reader from the objective of the passage, namely to describe a nature scene where a whale comes to the surface. Why does he use these cultural-linguistic phrases? His intentions may produce different reactions in the reader. On the one hand the reaction may involve a feeling of detachment from the whale, but on the other hand the reaction may lead to familiarization and identification with the whale. Melville creates a familiar image of “a portly burgher smoking his pipe” which humanizes the whale and this essentially reinforces the drama a few passages later when the whale is attacked: “The red tide now poured from all sides from the monster like brooks down a hill” (“Stubb Kills A Whale”, 269). A serene image is suddenly turned into a bloody slaughter and Melville has created a violent opposition between the initial

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presentation of the whale through anthropomorphism and then the sudden manifestation of the whale as a “monster”. In a way we can assert that Melville employs cultural-linguistic phrases in order to create a dynamics between closeness and distance to the whale, which ultimately results in a violent reaction with the reader since a familiarity is established prior to the forthcoming bloodshed.

In an excerpt from John Muir’s The Mountains of California Mount Ritter, located in Yosemite National Park, is depicted with human features. As Muir makes his way through “the yawning chasm of the foot” and onwards to “the mouth of a narrow avalanche gully” where he encounters “the mountain face” (Muir, “The Range of Light”, 253). Muir applies much religious anthropomorphism like “cathedrals”, “turrets” and “spires” as well (255256): “Colossal spires 200 feet in height waved like supple goldenrods chanting and bowing low as if in worship, while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire” (Muir, “The Range of Light”, 260). Surely, this religious anthropomorphism had another impact on contemporary readers in Muir’s time than in our times where religious references may not “help” the reader to picture the landscape. This use of anthropomorphism may very well distract and distance the modern reader from the subject matter. Notwithstanding religious imagery Muir applies well-known anthropomorphisms that has become worked into our language when we speak of nature, as in the “shoulder” or the “foot” of mountains. These kinds of anthropomorphism assist us in relating to nature and this is how Melville, like Muir, tries to communicate the sight of a scene in nature, be it a mountain or a whale. The poet, or the writer, uses a language to connect us as readers to the subject matter. By using anthropomorphisms both Melville and Muir

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make a connection between human culture and nature’s “massive picture” (Muir, “The Range of Light”, 252). Melville’s cultural-linguistic construct of the whale as a “frigate” is intended to familiarize the reader who has never seen a whale, but knows how a capsized frigate looks like because that may feel more familiar in society. In the same way Muir represents the mountain as something human in order to make it familiar, but one could also argue that he de-naturalizes it by humanizing it. In other words he makes the mountain more of a cultural phenomena than a natural one, which may create an unintended distance to the subject matter and the idea of presenting nature accurately. Indeed, whether anthropomorphic language distracts or familiarizes the reader with nature is essentially a question of connotation and interpretation.

Thoreau makes use of anthropomorphisms in Walden when he writes about on how the leaves turn in the fall: “And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls” (Walden, Chapter 13: “House-Warming”, 1893). Indeed, this is another example of how the author humanizes natural objects and grants them an identity, which displays unity with nature and a respect for it. Thoreau feels close to the trees and eagerly observes the change in color of their leaves. In Walden there are also examples of “naturalization” where Thoreau identifies himself with nature and attributes natural phenomena to himself: “I grew in those seasons like corn in the night” (Walden, Chapter 4: “Sounds”, 1827). This type of imagery works in the opposite way of anthropomorphism, but has the same purpose of bringing the nature

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and man closer. One could argue that there exists a paradoxical relation between the distance and closeness created by “naturalization” as well, which even so leads to an understanding of nature. However, “naturalization” takes nature as its point of departure; it attributes nature to man and thus make the unity between them more striking. Nature is where Thoreau feels like he belongs: “I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself” (Walden, Chapter 5: “Solitude”, 1836). Indeed, human nature is inevitably part of nature and through the means of language we try to relate to it and express this relationship.

The Gendering of Nature The gendering of nature is found in all our works of nature writing. This is another example of how the poets try to connect nature with man and make it familiar. It is especially obvious how Melville ascribes femininity to the sky and masculinity to the sea in Moby Dick:

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep. Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snowwhite wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and from the depths, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea. (Melville, Moby Dick, “The Symphony”, 490)

The feminine features are “pure and soft” as in “the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds” or like the air which is filled with “gentle thoughts”. The masculine features are “robust” and “murderous” as in violent and phallic references such as “man-

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like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells” or “rushed mighty leviathans, swordfish, and sharks”. These are well-known divisions of femininity and masculinity. When used in nature writing violence and malice are usually attributed to the male sex, whilst maternity and tenderness is attributed to the female sex. In Dickinson’s poem we see explicit examples of this where she speaks of nature as «the Gentlest Mother» who has «Her Golden finger on Her lip/Wills Silence - Everywhere-» (Dickinson, “790”), whereas and the masculinity is portrayed with something frightening and with sexual undertones: «I dreaded that first Robin, so/But He is mastered, now, I’m some accustomed to Him grown/He hurts a little though» (Dickinson, “348”). If one could say that this division of femininity and masculinity is a sexual one as well Thoreau has another example of gendered anthropomorphism which presents us with different associations as he depicts nature as: “A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet” (Walden, Chapter 6: “Solitude”, 1841). Nature’s “lustiness” not withstanding, more than anything else this line gives connotations of security and care of a grandmother. Nature is likened to something we all associate with protection and nurture, and thus appreciate. Gendering as a literary technique works in both directions of familiarization and detachment. As human beings we can relate to gendering and sexuality in nature and this can make us familiar with the “gentility” of the female or the “robustness“ of the male. On the other hand gendering bases itself on cultural stereotypes. These stereotypes are onedimensional and thus create a very one-dimensional view of nature. In spite of the biologically and historically concept of the “brutality” of men and the “sweetness” of women this may not necessarily bring one closer to a precise description of nature and its phenomena.

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Distance or closeness to nature In my discussion I want to see if the use of anthropomorphisms in nature writing creates a sense of closeness between nature and man. In the examples I have used above there are attempts to make nature familiar, which often is the intention of anthropomorphism, whether or not that familiarity relates to sweet or disturbing aspects of nature. Ahab makes Moby-Dick into something evil, but as Starbuck tells him: “See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!” (Moby Dick, “The Chase - Third Day”, 516). Ahab makes Moby-Dick embody total malice and devotes his life to pursue and kill it. In the end this leads to Ahab’s doom; he brings the rest of the Pequod’s crew with him into the depth of the sea, except Ishmael whose life is spared so he can tell the story of human monomania. Nature is what it is, namely nature, and we are part of it. We need to acknowledge this or else will we feel detached from nature and disillusioned like Ahab. In his chapter “Brute Neighbors” Thoreau recounts a scene of battling ants as if it were a war report. There are “legions” of ants that cover the surrounding hills, which are “strewn with the dead and dying”. Thoreau likens the “internecine war” to a “battle” between “red republicans” and “black imperialist” (Walden, Chapter 12: “Brute Neighbors”, 1888). He ascribes human history and politics to the ants, which represent the brutality of nature. Interestingly war is often called “barbaric” and “uncivilized” and attributed to our natural, brutal instincts, but Thoreau employs cultural-linguistic constructs of war to describe the ants’ actions. Thoreau makes the account of the battle very vivid to us as he “enlarges” it into a human perspective by using anthropomorphisms like “war” and “battlefield” or references to The Iliad and the Trojan War. In a sense it can be regarded as “the macrocosm in the microcosm”. Thoreau’s interpretation of the ants as

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brutally “battling” is similar to Ahab’s rage against Moby-Dick as a malicious agent, although Ahab is literal and serious and Thoreau is humorous. Descriptions like the one in “Brute Neighbors” is ultimately also an interpretation of nature, where “linguistic inventiveness” (Brøgger, Handout, 10) makes the scene more familiar and easier for the reader to understand. We can never be free from our own interpretations; they can even capture us and become our doom, like in the case of Ahab and the Pequod. Our conceptions of nature are never objective. Everyone perceives the world differently, depending on individual interests. A mountain could be a maternal god, a forest pond could be a mirror and a bird could be an uncaring fellow. But does such a constructionist position introduced by Kant, where everyone perceives the world subjectively, bring us closer to nature or does it create a cultural-linguistic barrier between nature and us?

The Neo-Platonic philosophy of essentialism, where the meaning of nature is immanently given is presented in Emerson and to some degree in Thoreau. For some readers this attribution of essentialist notions to natural phenomena could create a distance to the nature descriptions. In Moby Dick Ishmael tells of the closeness he feels with nature, through very accurate and vivid imagery: At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang. (Melville, Moby Dick, “The Gilder”, 449)

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Ishmael expresses an awareness of the ambiguity of nature in this passage. Beneath the surface, or “this velvet paw”, is concealed “a remorseless fang” which could also very well be a good metaphor for nature itself, the unpredictability of its sudden storms, catastrophes and disasters. The scene of a smooth sea is beautiful, but could in hours change into a terrifying scene with storms or a gigantic squids that surface at sea. We do not know what lies beneath the surface and we cannot easily predict nature. “I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark” (Walden, Chapter 5: “Solitude”, 1837), writes Thoreau and states human beings` fear of nature’s unpredictability. One could argue that the ambiguity that Ishmael expresses in this passage is also a result of a projection of his “interior landscape” onto nature, where the narrative construction works as what Barry Lopez thinks of as “a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape” (Lopez, “Landscape and Narrative”, 65). Furthermore, Lopez may applaud the ambiguity of the passage, as he believes that “the truth reveals itself most fully not in dogma but in the paradox, irony, and contradictions distinguishing compelling narratives” (71). Nevertheless what makes these passages so intriguing is that they create precision in what they aim to describe. This precision creates closeness and may make the reader acknowledge unity with nature though the familiarity created. Although cultural-linguistic constructs are employed in achieving this exactness precision is the main objective. Therefore is “linguistic inventiveness” often necessary as a literary technique in order to achieve this precision. Obviously, this kind of precision created by cultural-linguistic constructs may cause both familiarity and alienation. Nature is not immanently good, or bad. Nonetheless, it is a question of interpretation of nature and a sense of ambiguity is expressed thematically.

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This ambiguity emphasizes the relationship between what Lopez calls the “interior landscape” and the “exterior landscape” (65). In the end we could conclude that both formative precision and thematic complexity helps creating closeness through precision.

Conclusion In my discussion on accuracy in nature writing I have looked at how writers like Melville, Thoreau, Dickinson and Muir have tried to describe and present nature in literature. Their attempts at precision are both scientific and poetic. Formatively speaking precision creates closeness, which Buell refers to as “literature’s referential dimension” (86) and is elementary in nature writing. My discussion has also involved great focus on the use of anthropomorphism in nature writing. Seeing nature in human terms helps the reader to relate to what is being presented in this kind of literature. Gendering, “naturalization” and anthropomorphisms are means of bringing us as readers closer to an understanding and awareness of nature. It is a way in which the writer brings the reader and the subject matter of the text closer to each other through identification, but essentially it is a question of interpretation whether this leads to distance or closeness. Thematically we can speak of a certain lack of respect for nature that can lead to alienation and distance when reading nature-related literature. The aim of accuracy in nature writing focuses often on the project of awareness of nature as something we should respect and acknowledge, like in the texts of Thoreau and Muir. In order to overcome the “inexpressibility” of nature the author needs to make use of “representation’s power to invent, stylize and dislocate” (Buell, “Representing the Environment”, 99). This is the advantage of literary geniuses like Melville, Thoreau and Dickinson. They attempt to create “harmony between the two landscapes” - the exterior 14

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and the interior one (Lopez, “Landscape and Narrative”, 68). Ultimately, any nature writing is interpretation. Through “linguistic inventiveness” (Brøgger, Handout, 10) nature is depicted accurately, but also attributed with cultural constructs. Nature writing has a dual function of representing accurately and constructing by use of anthropomorphism and other cultural imagery because this creates awareness in the reader and nature’s presence as well as its multiple and complex signification.

Bibliography Brøgger, Fredrik Chr. Handout: “Theory of the Study of Nature Writing”, University of Tromsø, 2002 Buell, Lawrence. “Representing the Environment”, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995 Dickinson, Emily. The Poems of Emily Dickinson, 1960, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, fifth ed., vol. 1, gen. ed. Nina Baym, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1998 Lopez, Barry. “Landscape and Narrative”, Crossing Open Ground, Vintage, New York, 1978 Melville, Herman. Moby Dick, 1851, in Moby Dick by Herman Melville, ed. Charles Child Walcutt, Bantam Books, New York, 1981 Muir, John. “The Range of Light”, The Mountains of California, 1894, in The Wilderness Reader, ed. Frank Bergon, NAL, New York, 1980 Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, or Life in the Woods, 1854, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, fifth ed., vol. 1, gen. ed. Nina Baym, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1998

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