Abstract:
This paper explores the language theories of Gary Snyder, an important modern
environmental author whose early work was associated with the Beat movement of the
early 1950's. I am particularly interested in Snyder's thoughts on how language relates
to nature. I focus primarily on Snyder's prose in attempts to understand his thoughts
on language, but I also look at his book of poetry Mountains and Rivers Without End
as an illustration of his theories on language and its relation to the self. I also compare
Snyder's thoughts to those of the twentieth century phenomenologist Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, showing how both writer and philosopher help cross the divide that
has developed between language and nature in contemporary literary theory. In the
first chapter, I describe how Snyder bridges a divide between two environmental
movements which are often thought to be in tension: ecofeminism and deep ecology.
Adding to this, I also explore Snyder's appropriation of Buddhist thought into his own
environmental vision, referring principally to the 11th Century Buddhist philosopher
Dogen, a key figure in the development of Zen. It is from Dogen that Snyder draws
his views of self as empty. In chapter two, I further develop Snyder's vision of an
empty self, specifically in relation to language, and compare his views with the
phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, who also explains self as the emptiness of
"nothing." Both Snyder's idea of the empty self, appropriated from Buddhism, and
Merleau-Ponty's conception of the self as "nothing" position self as determined
through the context within which the self is situated. This alternative idea of the
subject allows self-expression language to become a manifestation of the larger biotic
community, rather than an assertion of the ego of individual humans. In the third
chapter, I describe the structured relationship between language and nature as that of
reciprocal wildness. In this structure, language organizes itself in a manner similar to
the ecology of any particular bioregion. Language then both reflects and creates
nature. It is the result of the outpouring of the self as a matrix of connections. Yet
language is also self-organizing, so it generates its own structures and organizations
that then influence the self's perceptions of the world beyond language.
