from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Jeffers#Inhumanism
- Inhumanism
- Jeffers was an advocate for inhumanism, the belief that mankind is too self-centered and too indifferent to the "astonishing beauty of things." Articulated in the first half of the 1900s, inhumanism views that humans may strive, but will always be unable to "uncenter" themselves. Furthermore Inhumanism called for "a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to notman; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence.... This manner of thought and feeling is neither misanthropic nor pessimist.... It offers a reasonable detachment as rule of conduct, instead of love, hate and envy.... it provides magnificence for the religious instinct, and satisfies our need to admire greatness and rejoice in beauty."
from http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=3692216624
- Randolph Pitts: Someone once asked Jeffers if he saw any relationship between the themes expressed in his poetry and Buddhism. Jeffers' response was "I prefer Spinoza." I have attended a couple of the RJA (Robinson Jeffers Association) conferences, and am a member of the RJA and subscribe to its journal. Occasional references to Jeffers' interest in Spinoza crop up in all of these contexts, but I am not aware of any detailed study on the topic. Of course it's easy to say, "Well, they were both pantheists," but that's too simplistic, and is actually not strictly true for either of them. Nevertheless, we know that Jeffers acknowledged an affinity with Spinoza, and it is fascinating to that he ranked that affinity over any affinity with Buddhism. Perhaps I am making a big deal about this only because Spinoza is my favorite philosopher (he held the same position for Hegel, Nietzsche and Einstein) and Jeffers is my favorite poet. Any thoughts, ye scholarly types?
from http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/jeffers/life.htm
- By the time of his death, Jeffers had lost most of his popular audience, and within two decades his works had virtually disappeared from anthologies and his name from classrooms, even as his works were being translated for avid readers in Eastern European countries. However, burgeoning projects by Jeffers scholars and the revising, in the late 1980s, of the canon of American literature reestablished Jeffers as an important figure in American literature and Modernism, who sought, like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens, to redefine the role of poetry in the human experience and to identify the authentic relationship of the human experience to the world at large and to God but, perhaps unlike them (Jeffers would affirm), also to preserve the reality beyond the poem.
- In articulating what sort of experience is required, deep ecologists turn to a variety of sources: philosphers like Baruch Spinoza and Martin Heidegger; the worldviews of indigenous peoples such as the Native Americans; writers and poets such as Henry Thoreau and Robbinson Jeffers; and reflective environmentalists such as the American forester Aldo Leopold. Many have turned to Buddhism and some have turned specifically to Zen. Zen has proven attractive to deep ecologists because it is focused on a particular mode of experiencing the world, one that apparently leads people to behave in 'eco-friendly' ways.
시 Return
A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.
I will go to the lovely Sur Rivers
And dip my arms in them up to the shoulders.
I will find my accounting where the alder leaf quivers
In the ocean wind over the river boulders.
I will touch things and things and no more thoughts,
That breed like mouthless May-flies darkening the sky,
The insect clouds that blind our passionate hawks
So that they cannot strike, hardly can fly.
Things are the hawk's food and noble is the mountain, Oh noble
Pico Blanco, steep sea-wave of marble.
