With light
And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,
Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Fears in Solitude’
The Natural World
The source of all that we do, no matter how refined or complex, is nature. Living in this more-than-human world sets important and necessary limits on our lives — lives that are incontestably influenced by the many agencies that surround us. The attempt to transcend our animal natures is therefore misguided and harmful. Instead, we must learn to accept our place on this storied and beautiful planet, which sustains but vastly exceeds us. This is important because when nature is discovered and appreciated for its own sake, it often leads to a non-anthropocentric outlook. This stance can facilitate an attitude of humility toward all Earthlings, including humans. Indeed, to be in accordance with nature is to be fully human and to accept death, the ultimate limit, as natural and just. This is why we don’t hold to the ‘green misanthropy’ of some nature advocates, nor the world-denying ideas of the transhumanists, both anti-human in their own way. Yet the issue of misanthropy is just one of the many complex issues that have the potential to alter our view of nature and how we approach the current ecological catastrophe. We also believe that the recent fervour for anthropocentric identity politics, according to which environmental issues are just one part in the litany of societal issues afflicting humans, should be tempered, especially its vigorous Critical Social Justice form. As for the practice of ecology, understanding and managing ecosystems is necessary due to the damage we’ve caused; however, it’s important to be wary of the dominance of neoliberal thought in conservation (‘ecosystem services’ and ‘natural capital’), as well as the scientific reductionist perception of nature more generally. Finally, in terms of the study of nature from a literary and philosophical perspective, we tend to value older approaches rooted in Romanticism (for all its fatuous individualism), meaning a simpler appreciation of nature as a subject of veneration rather than the neologism-laden and even human-centred postmodern schools of thought.
“I believe that the wildest flights of the fancies of any of us have their homes with Mother Earth.”
– Lord Dunsany
“The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
“[T]his was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.”
– John Ruskin
Wonder, Religion and Spirituality
Enchantment is an experience that can profoundly change how we understand and interact with our world. To be enchanted is, as the etymology of the word implies, to be ‘in a song’ or any narrative, and the greatest story is of course that of the Earth. Looking at its dynamics more closely, enchantment is an experience of animistic and therefore non-anthropocentric wonder at an enchanting other, whether that be a person, a tree or even a painting. In other words, enchantment respects immanent meaning shared between Earthlings. This notion of relational meaning in a co-inhabited world is something about which we at Thitherword care deeply.
The values inherent in a stance of wonderment are fundamentally at odds with the doctrine of mastery shared by monotheistic religion and secular notions of progress. Relatedly, they are also incommensurable with religious supernaturalism and scientific materialism. Thitherword upholds the importance of scientific materialism as a way of affirming our animal origins and understanding more about our world, yet this way of knowing can easily be distorted into an aggressive reductionism that devalues our most meaningful experiences. Regarding religious supernaturalism, our starting point is to be wary of any transcendent source since this can turns one’s attention away from the phenomenal world. At the same time, we sit within a position of true uncertainty regarding the divine and therefore hold open the idea of a god or gods as a source of unconquerable mystery and creative inspiration. We’re equally aware of and sympathetic to the non-anthropocentric teachings of some religions (which run counter to equally prevalent anthropocentric imperatives), as well as the emphasis on the power of story and the comfort of ritual known to many world religions. Ultimately, in our view, religion cannot be designated wholly good nor bad.
What’s more troubling, we think, is the dominance of the secular susceptibility to mastery through the three engines of capital, the state and technoscience (Patrick Curry’s ‘Megamachine’), intermixed with the hyper individualism of the neoliberal order and the dominance of Critical Social Justice, which is itself taking on quasi-theological characteristics. Arguably, we’re living through the most anthropocentric time ever despite our increased awareness of ecological degradation and anthropogenic climate change. We must instead learn to walk with enchantment and take on the lessons it imparts to us, when it deigns to do so, since this can lead to the adoption of a post-secular and Earth-centred ethics of sacrality.
“[T]he ontology of enchantment is a relational, perspectival and participatory one.”
– Patrick Curry
“There is […] a close affinity between the attitude of wonder itself — non-exploitative, non-utilitarian — and attitudes that seek to affirm and respect other-being.”
– R.W. Hepburn
“The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.”
– Susanna Clarke
Art and Architecture I
In our major towns and cities, a regime of blinding lights and grating noise constantly disrupts the life patterns of birds, insects and many other wildlife groups. We humans are also losing our sense of meaning and orientation within the built environment. We’re forced to live in drab tower blocks and work in piercing glass towers, the products of failed social programmes and the accrual of capital as master value. Whole movements in architecture have dedicated themselves to stripping away any semblance of beauty, tradition, warmth or comfort from our buildings, such as ascetic modernism, harsh brutalism, technophilic structural expressionism and even the regrettably austere zoomorphic and biomorphic attempts at architecture. Then there’s the deliberate discordancy of garish postmodern vanity projects, which fit in nowhere, and the artless exercises in technical proficiency posing as buildings, essentially a mix of mechanical mastery and randomness of design. But, alas, we’re too stupid to know what’s best for us!
Untethered from our environment, we more easily succumb to a craving for the goods we see in shop windows, which reflect ourselves tenfold as though we had entered a hall of mirrors. Looking up, obnoxious advertisements glare down at us, promising a life well lived while obscuring the landscape. The result of all of this is that the urban world is at once deeply human and yet not fit for human living at all. A return to local and traditional building practices and limiting our structures to the human scale could help us to feel more at ease in our surroundings and alleviate threats to wildlife. We are most enthusiastic about a renewed appreciation for carving, painting and engraving scenes honouring not only the human form but also that of nonhumans animals, plants, and, dare we say, mythical creatures and gods. Abstract geometric symbols have their place also. After all, adornment was once ubiquitous, spanning an immense period of time from the cave paintings of Lascaux to Art Deco, roughly speaking. And we don’t necessarily make a distinction between traditional supernatural/religious and natural/secular aesthetics here. Any storied and beautiful work is a revolt against the cold sheen that chills our bones in this unfortunate slice of time in which we’re living.
In the realm of art we appear to have collectively adopted an outlook that scorns beauty and tradition, exalting irrationality and crudeness instead. It’s extremely difficult to ignore the abundance of phallic or scatological installations, not to mention the amorphous blobs and heaps of rusted metal, which grow out of our public spaces like cancerous growths. We could erect statues representing the aspirational human form or construct dazzling murals dedicated to the untouched natural world. Instead, works of shock and debasement predominate, all made in the belief that art must reflect an immutably ugly and meaningless world. This worldview puts us in mind of a prisoner scrawling hateful profanities on his cell wall instead of lessening his anguish by adorning the space he has left to him with birds, trees and fire. This isn’t to say that dark and stirring art shouldn’t be made, yet these creations stand a world apart from, say, a masterfully sculpted vanitas statue reminding us that we are to die.
Retreating inside galleries for solace, we’re likely to be met with the same disregard for anything good and true due to the dominance of the cynical art market, which continues to make fools of us all. And, sadly, we must now contend with increasing attacks on artworks and exhibits by environmental activists who seek to destroy or make more difficult to appreciate what’s good in the world as a comment on the loss of the good. What we need is an additive approach, one based on an outlook of conservative gratitude. Indeed, even places of worship have been infiltrated, and we needn’t follow a traditional religion to bemoan the complete disregard for the old and reverent here as well, particularly in the form of hideous concept pieces. Thus do we scorn the gifts left to us by the makers of the past.
Art and architecture appear to be moving in such a way as to detach and disconnect from the world. What hope can we have of recalling Earth’s heritage, then, if we are to physically leave the planet behind in the future? Unlike many in the area of nature studies, we believe that space exploration isn’t an inherently masculinist and Promethean endeavour whose operations should be halted at once. However, it’s disheartening to think that, should we ever establish settlements on other worlds, we’ll continue to make in such a way as to promote the sterile and new over the fertile and storied. We hope that the people of the future will remember Earth by adorning their homes and public spaces with images representing this planet’s rich array of flora and fauna, as well as the many stories we used to tell ourselves.
“Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.”
– Sir Roger Scruton
“The decorative and the ornamental are characteristic of things. They are life’s way of telling us that life is about more than mere functioning.”
– Byung-Chul Han
“Forcing themselves on our perception, those low and facile signs clog up the landscape, which itself is more difficult, discreet, silent, and often dying because unseen by any saving perception.”
– Michel Serres
II
For us the word thither signifies walking with the Earth and keeping it within us when the iron will of modernity seeks to imprison us physically and mentally. The word also suggests a related movement toward that place or to the other side. Art can take us there, opening our hearts and minds. We especially enjoy engaging with creative works that allow us to inhabit new worlds more connected to the past and to nature, or, if representing our own world, help develop unique ways of perceiving our surroundings. In regards to fiction, inhabiting Tolkien’s Arda helped us to discover Earth anew, while Lord Dunsany’s fantasy-reality tales revealed to us the importance of wildness in the built environment, Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi awakened us to our deeper contemplative faculties and to the good in society, and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy informed us about what works and what doesn’t in tradition. In virtual reality, our time adventuring across Azeroth in World of Warcraft opened our eyes to ecocentrism and the importance of heritage, while the ludic wonders of games such as Gorogoa, Journey, The Longing, and Monument Valley have inspired us with their unique perspectives on space and time. And, to give just two examples in the realm of fine art, we think the portal paintings of Zdzisław Beksiński extol the power of liminality and change and that Theodor Kittelsen’s Huldra Forsvant speaks to a deep yearning for a lost world that moves many of us today. Finally, films like Every Star by Yawen Zheng and The Man Who Planted Trees, adapted from Giono’s novel, inspire us with their visionary themes of connection and enrichment. These are but a handful of many examples of works of art that help us walk with the Earth.
“What brings you here?”
– A question asked by a Night Elf (in the world of Azeroth)
“Wild groves, sacred grounds fade to vastness
Mother Moon, cast your spell on these fields, let the boughs paint ghostly shades on the trail
to a different world.”
– The Raven Child, sung by Hansi Kürsch
“Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”
– J.R.R Tolkien
Non-Fiction Reading List
(To be continually refined)
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
A Sense of Wonder Towards Nature: Healing the Planet through Belonging by Hadyn Washington
A Short History of Decay by Emil Cioran
Architecture: A Visual History by Jonathan Glancey
Art and Enchantment: How Wonder Works and Enchantment: Wonder in Modern Life by Patrick Curry
Beauty by Roger Scruton
Capitalism and the Death Drive and Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld by Byung-Chul Han
Darkness: A Cultural History by Nina Edwards
Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes with Other Popular Moralists
Ecological Ethics by Patrick Curry
Ecological Literature and the Critique of Anthropocentrism by Brian L. Moore
Environmental Ethics by Robin Attfield
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
How to be Animal by Melanie Challenger
Imagination and Creativity by Michael Beaney
In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
Letters to a Young Scientist by E O Wilson
Lost Knowledge of the Imagination by Gary Lachman
Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution? by Michel Serres
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel
Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton
Natural History: A Selection by Pliny the Elder
Nowadays, Patches of Sunlight, and The Donnellan Lectures by Lord Dunsany
On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry
On Fairy-Stories by J.R.R. Tolkien
Oxford History of Art series (Classical Art, Early Medieval Art, Medieval Art)
Sacred Nature by Karen Armstrong
Symbols and Allegories in Art Matilde Battistini
The Book of Legendary Lands by Umberto Eco
The Denial of Death by Ernst Becker
The Forest in Folklore and Mythology by Alexander Porteous
The Gothic by Nick Groom
The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World by Andrew Doyle
The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
The Shortest History of Europe by John Hirst
The Worm at the Core by Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski
Thoughtful Theism by Fr Andrew Younan
To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters by Suzanne Cooper
Wabi-sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence by Andrew Juniper
Whatever Happened to Tradition? by Tim Stanley
Wisdom of the Ancients by Neil Oliver
Wonder: A Grammar by Sophia Vasalou
“Wonder” and Other Essays by R.W. Hepburn
Fiction Reading List
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
Mythago Wood and Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock
Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse
Pan and Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Call of the Wild, White Fang and To Build a Fire by Jack London
The Cathedral of Mist by Paul Willems
The Complete Fairy Tales and Phantastes: A Faerie Romance by George MacDonald
The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabinski
The Dark Eidolon and other Fantasies by Clark Ashton Smith
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and How Much Land Does a Man Need? by Leo Tolstoy
The Gormenghast Trilogy and Boy in Darkness by Mervyn Peake
The Iliad of Homer
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Mabinogion (various authors)
The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
The novellas of Algernon Blackwood (The Willows/Ancient Sorceries/The Wendigo/The Man Whom the Trees Loved)
The Other Side by Alfred Kubin
The poetry of John Clare
The poetry of S.T. Coleridge
The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris
The works of J.R.R. Tolkien, especially The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Smith of Wootton Major and Leaf By Niggle
The works of Lord Dunsany, especially The King of Elfland’s Daughter, the Pegāna mythology and the short story collections (ranging from The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories to The Last Book of Wonder)
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison
‘Twixt Dog and Wolf by C.F. Keary
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson