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제9강: 행동하는 농부시인 Wendell Berry

―The Want of Peace‖, ―Peace of the Wild Things‖, ―The Dream‖, ―The Wild Geese‖

2011 봄 전세재 Wendell Berry

“Wendell Berry . . . can be said to have returned American poetry to a Wordsworthian clarity of purpose. ... There are times when we might think he is returning us to the simplicities of John Clare or the crustiness of Robert Frost. ... But, as with every major poet, passages in which style threatens to become a voice of its own suddenly give way, like the sound of chopping in a murmurous forest, to lines of power and memorable resonance. Many of Mr. Berry's short poems are as fine as any written in our time." (David Ray)

2 Life of Wendell Berry

a poet, a novelist, an essayist, a naturalist, a small farmer

1934 Born in Henry County,

1958 Graduated from

1965 Started farming in Lane's Landing, near Port Royal, Kentucky,

1987-93 Taught at English Department of the University of Kentucky

1994 Resigned teaching position for full-time farming

1995- Continued to work as a novelist, a poet, an essayist,

a naturalist, a small farmer

3 Wendell Berry (1934- )

Major Works of Poetry

• Openings: Poems, 1968. • Farming: A Handbook, 1970. • The Country of , 1973. • Three Memorial Poems, 1977. • Collected Poems, 1957-1982, 1985. • Entries: Poems, 1994. • The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1998. • A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997, • Given: New Poems, Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005.

4 Wendell Berry

• A Poet of Tradition

• A Poet of Activism

• A Poet of Agriculture

• A Poet of Nature

5 A Poet of Tradition • marital fidelity and strong community ties as essential for the survival of humankind. • "We must support what supports local life, which means community, family, household life—the moral capital our larger institutions have to come to rest upon. If the larger institutions undermine the local life, they destroy that moral capital just exactly as the industrial economy has destroyed the natural capital of localities—soil fertility and so on. Essential wisdom accumulates in the community much as fertility builds in the soil."

A Poet of Activism • protest against the War in Vietnam • engaged in nonviolent against the construction of a nuclear power plant at Marble Hill, Indiana. • protest against the construction of a coal-burning power plant in Clark County, Kentucky 6 A Poet of Agriculture • small-scale farming • agriculture is the foundation of America's greater culture. He makes a strong case against the U.S. government's agricultural policy, which promotes practices leading to overproduction, pollution, and soil erosion. • "Today, local economies are being destroyed by the displaced, global economy, which has no respect for what works in a locality. The global economy is built on the principle that one place can be exploited, even destroyed, for the sake of another place."

7 A Poet of Nature • the environmental writer who has most thoughtfully tried to come to terms with labor" and "one of the few environmental writers who takes work seriously (Richard White) • author of The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, one of the key texts of the , • his attempts to integrate ecological and agricultural thinking • "like Thoreau, one of Berry's fundamental concerns is working out a basis for living a principled life. And like Thoreau, in his quest for principles Berry has chosen to simplify his life, and much of what he writes about is what has attended this simplification, as well as a criticism of modern society from the standpoint of this simplicity."

8 Wendell Berry’s Law of Nature

• Beware the justice of Nature. • Understand that there can be no successful human economy apart from Nature or in defiance of Nature. • Understand that no amount of education can overcome the innate limits of human intelligence and responsibility. We are not smart enough or conscious enough or alert enough to work responsibly on a gigantic scale. • In making things always bigger and more centralized, we make them both more vulnerable in themselves and more dangerous to everything else. Learn, therefore, to prefer small-scale elegance and generosity to large-scale greed, crudity, and glamour. • Make a home. Help to make a community. Be loyal to what you have made. • Put the interest of the community first. • Love your neighbors--not the neighbors you pick out, but the ones you have. • Love this miraculous world that we did not make, that is a gift to us. • As far as you are able make your lives dependent upon your local place, neighborhood, and household--which thrive by care and generosity--and independent of the industrial economy, which thrives by damage. • Find work, if you can, that does no damage. Enjoy your work. Work well. (From "The Futility of Global Thinking―) 9 ―The Want of Peace‖

• Peace • Idealization of the lives of fishermen and gardeners • Critique of modern way of lives • Glorification of the simple life • Grace and peace

―The Peace of Wild Things‖

• Grace, freedom, peace, and solace • Agony of human’s self-consciousness

10 ―The Dream‖

• Nightmare or Sweet Dream • Social ecology …the environmental crisis is ―not the product of man’s biological capabilities… but of his social actions‖ (Barry Commoner) … the solution can be found in politics rather than individual attitude. • Monkey Wrench Gang – • Desire in his dream to restore the primal scene • Dilemma of a modern

11 ―The Wild Geese‖

• His working experience in his farm • The recognition of now and here • The intermingled sense of the past, the present and the future • Symbolism of Persimmon seed Geese

12 Discussion

• Characteristics of Wendell Berry’s Nature

• Ecological implication of Wendell Berry’s poems

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