ESP.LITERATURE

Besides, nature, by all the feelings she aroused in me, seemed to me the most opposite thing in the world to the mechanical inventions of mankind. The less she bore their imprint, the more room she offered for the expansion of my heart. —Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922), In Search Of Lost Time

Remote areas that allow for exploration, introspection, and  recreation are, like honest men, difficult to find. By definition, these areas will be free, for the most part, of intrusions by humans: roadless, undeveloped, natural, free of the incessant noise that humans seem to crave. The need for such areas only increases with their scarcity. Humans make do with walks through small patches of woodland, short hikes to mountain lakes, and brief visits  along some desert fringe; or they do without. The species evolved living symbiotically with the natural world. Civilization and ignorance has blurred the awareness of that relationship ; but fresh air, clean water, and a modicum of unrestrained flora and fauna remain necessities.

Wilderness defies definition. Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac, 1949) covered many pages with words in his attempt to categorize what is, essentially, beyond categorization. Scotland has created an interactive map (Wild Scotland) that has identified various parcels of land, both large and small, as wilderness or otherwise. The U.S. Forest Service has its definition. Generally, wilderness is defined by its vast extent and freedom from direct, large-scale human activities. Most research clearly indicates that wilderness by its simplest definition—an area untrammeled by man—is quickly disappearing. If areas that have prohibitive weather or access,  such as Antarctica and the vast expanse of oceans, are left out of the equation, the conclusion is that wilderness occupies no more than 20% of the Earth’s surface. If one considers wilderness that is accessible on one day outings from urban areas or even small communities, the available wilderness is much smaller.

Coyotes do not mind, nor do ravens. And insects. Or arthropods.

But homo sapiens? What of us?

Biblically, the metaphoric taming of wilderness and its beasts is too often taken literally, and used to ordain the civilizing of wild places in order to make them productive and bring them under some  god’s will. Scientifically, the need to identify and quantify often carried all other considerations such as conservation and preservation before it. Politically, governments claimed territories and inevitably sought to exploit all resources.  Reasonably, however, destroying the planet’s biomes seems at best short sighted. Ethically, the current ecological path seems, to many, suicidal.

The need for wilderness lies in biodiversity, contiguous habitat, preserving a limited supply of fresh water, and ensuring some semblance of clean air. These are all physical needs common to all living organisms. For humans, a more compelling reason for maintaining some semblance of wilderness might rest in the ability of nature to preserve and restore intellectual and spiritual harmony, to help maintain ourselves as ‘wholesome’ human beings. Leopold defined wholesomeness as a fundamental, working harmony between humanity and the natural world. His philosophy centered on the premise that an action is “wholesome” or “right” when it preserves the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community—a complex, interconnected web of soils, waters, plants, and animals. 

That web, of course, contains us.

Those who are confined by chance or choice have discovered a wilderness closer at hand, an abundant, limitless region which is accessible without the need to leave one’s arm chair. Here is the domain of the philosopher, the poet, and perhaps the odd psychoanalyst more concerned with the thought process than with analysis. Commonly referred to as the psyche, this umbrella term covers all the processes of the mind, both conscious and unconscious, processes which constitute an abstract wilderness in which one’s persona is both developed, often concealed, and frequently harrowed. Tramping through the kaleidoscopic processes of one’s mind can be frightening; but doing so affords all the benefits of a walk in the woods: relaxation (arguably, one cannot access this wilderness effectively without relaxation; it seems to be the sine qua non), re-creation through a growing self-awareness, and introspective skills that improve with each thoughtful excursion into this busy void.

To be clear, I am not proposing intellectual excursions as a substitute for physical interactions with the natural world. Humans are brilliantly designed for movement, especially bipedalism: walking seems an essential activity for the well being of humans: the joints of the skeletal system are exquisite designs, and the foot specifically evolved for stepping along upright and aware. Though remote areas bring potentially the most benefit, they are not essential; natural areas are, arguably, better for health than urban areas. But even a walk around the block is better than slumping in a chair.

What I am proposing is an alternative for our vanishing physical wilderness. One does not have far to seek if it is the ultima thule one wishes. We all contain the ultimate wilderness within our heads, if you will accept the metaphor, an abstract space often labeled our psyche.

Psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, a pioneer in the field, created his own lexicon, his own jargon, to elucidate his theories of psyche and its issues. He proposed a metaphoric view of the intellect, a word I use in preference to psyche, a view for which he coined one short phrase: the container and the contained. His primary focus was to teach his patients to think, to harness the ability to deal with the frightful traumas, psychological and otherwise, that the world offers us, rather than analysis per se. The container is one’s intellect, the word giving some substance to the abstract form we create for the brain’s processes; the contained is simply the sum total of all  our perceptions and subsequent conceptions, the thoughts, ideas, fantasies, and whatever else we are able to conjure up. The container and its contents I offer up as the Ultima Thule, the fathomless wilderness in which we abide, in which we process the daily meanderings, the frights and epiphanies, the joys and sorrows. This very wilderness is, of course, the stuff of literature, of poetry: Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Shakespeare, Cervante’s Don Quixote, Marcel Proust, Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf, much of Blake, of Wordsworth, of Emily Dickinson, of Yeats, of Seamus Heaney, and a host of others. And it is literature, in general, and poetry in particular, that provide the best instruction, outside of Bion’s couch, for understanding our own and other’s intellectual terra incognito.

Such an argument for the efficacy of the written word to provide access to one’s intellect, to explore, to maintain, to improve the mind,  is bolstered by the contentions of many writers. Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, a Nobel Laureate, defined poetry as the ultimate biological and ethical goal of the human species. He argued in several essays that if humans are to gain any insight into consciousness (the intellect, in my terms) as well as the physical universe one must read verse; and that poetry was necessary for ‘… distilling and dealing with reality ….’ I would generalize that notion, and suggest literature in general would suffice. Words well written, aesthetically pleasing, and intellectually stimulating, are the provender needed to strengthen and fill Bion’s container, and to gain a modicum of understanding of all that it contains. Words shaped into thoughts and feelings become the tools that are needed to unlock the door to an opposite place, a place where one might discover the space and time for the expansion of both one’s heart and one’s psyche.