Darwin's bards : British and American poetry in the age of evolution

305 Pages·2009·1.653 MB·English

by  John Holmes

D A R W I N ’ S
B A R D S
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British and American Poetry in the
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Age of Evolution
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JOHN HOLMES

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‘John Holmes’s coverage of the relationship between science and poetry in Darwin’s O
Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolutionis remarkably complete. He
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has a scientist’s grasp of evolutionary theory and a thorough understanding of the
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controversies the theory has engendered. He also understands the difficulty many
have had in finding meaning in an existence framed by Darwinism. Holmes’s E
investigation of how poetry addresses these problems is unique, and he is correct S
in thinking that, ‘poems can even change how we think about Darwinism itself.’
Evolutionary science provides many of the details for understanding why the world is
the way it is, but we need Darwin’s Bardsto help us interpret these details, incorporate
them into our collective consciousness, and fully understand what it means to live D
in a Darwinian world.’ B
Douglas Shedd, Thoresen Professor of Biology, Randolph College, Lynchburg, Virginia ritA
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Darwin’s Bardsis the first comprehensive study of how poets have responded to the n
ideas of Charles Darwin in over fifty years. John Holmes argues that poetry can have d AW
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a profound impact on how we think and feel about the Darwinian condition. Is a
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Darwinian universe necessarily a godless one? What is our own place in the Darwinian ic
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universe, and our ecological role here on earth? How does our kinship with other n
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animals affect how we see them and ourselves? o’
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Holmes explores the ways in which some of the most perceptive and powerful British in
and American poets of the last hundred-and-fifty years have grappled with these tB
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questions, from Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning, through Thomas Hardy and AA D A R W I N ’ S
Robert Frost, to Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, Amy Clampitt and Edwin Morgan. Reading ge
their poetry, we too can experience what it can mean to live in a Darwinian world. ofR
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Dr John Holmesis a lecturer in the Department of English & American Literature at lu B A R D S
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the University of Reading. ioS
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Cover design: River Design, Edinburgh British and American Poetry in the
Cover image: Darwin and his former school
Age of Evolution
which is now Shrewsbury Library.
© Daniel Wrench, www.istockphoto.com E
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Edinburgh University Press i
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22 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LF b JOHN HOLMES
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www.euppublishing.com rg
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ISBN 978 0 7486 3940 3
Darwin’s Bards
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To Jo,
Amy and Hannah
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Darwin’s Bards
British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution
John Holmes
Edinburgh University Press
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© John Holmes, 2009
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 11/13 pt Goudy Old Style
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3940 3 (hardback)
The right of John Holmes
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Preface x
1 Poetry in the Age of Darwin 1
Science, poetry and literary criticism 1
Whose ‘Darwinism’? 6
The Darwinian tradition in modern poetry 22
Poetry and Darwinism in practice: Three poems by Edwin Morgan 27
2 Poetry and the ‘Non-Darwinian Revolution’ 37
Non-Darwinian evolution in late Victorian poetry 37
Pseudo-Darwinism and bad faith: A. C. Swinburne and
Mathilde Blind 46
Reading A Reading of Earth: George Meredith’s later poetry 54
Doubting progress: Science and evolution in Tennyson’s last
poems 62
3 God 75
Darwinism, Christianity and theology 75
Happenstance or design? Two sonnets 80
Natural theology: Robert Browning’s ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ 84
God after Darwin: Three contemporary American poets and
the Book of Job 89
4 Death 102
Darwinism, death and immortality 102
‘In the Woods’: George Meredith 107
Death and dying: Robinson Jeffers 116
Love and loss: Thomas Hardy 121
5 Humanity’s Place in Nature 130
‘The exact centre’, or just another African ape? 130
‘An idiot on a crumbling throne’: The cosmic perspective 133
‘Earth’s catastrophe’: The planetary perspective 139
‘All we’ve got’: The human perspective 148
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contents
6 Humans and Other Animals 154
More than kin and less than kind 154
At ‘the master-fulcrum of violence’: Hawks and falcons 159
‘A diminished thing’: Songbirds and birdsong 164
‘Someone else additional to him’: Deer in modern poetry 177
7 Love and Sex 185
Darwinism and sex 185
A Darwinian sex comedy: Constance Naden’s ‘Evolutional
Erotics’ 189
The Darwinian love sonnet: George Meredith and Edna St
Vincent Millay 197
Metamorphosis: Thom Gunn and the human animal 212
8 On Balance 226
For better or for worse 226
‘The just proportion of good to ill’: Weighing up evolution 230
Disenchantment and re-enchantment: The power of paradox 235
Darwin’s pagans: Meredith’s ‘Ode’ and Tennyson’s ‘Lucretius’ 245
Conclusion 260
Bibliography 263
Index 283
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Acknowledgements
Institutionally, my fi rst thanks must be to the Leverhulme Trust, who
awarded me a two-year Research Fellowship from 2006–8 to work on
Darwinism, poetry and poetics. Without the Trust’s generous support, this
book could not have been written in such good time. I owe a great debt too
to my employers and colleagues at the University of Reading, whose gener-
osity during my leave of absence was also fundamental. Thirdly, I am very
grateful indeed to the British Society for Literature and Science for giving
me the opportunity to meet so many like-minded scholars. Their enthusiasm
for this project has been a great encouragement to me throughout. I have
presented work towards this book at conferences of the British Society for
Literature and Science, the British Association for Victorian Studies, the
British Society for the History of Science, the North American Victorian
Studies Association and the International Cultural History Association;
at conferences at the universities of Keele, Ghent and Durham; and at
research seminars at the universities of Oxford, Sheffi eld, Warwick and
Keele. I am grateful to all these societies and universities for the oppor-
tunity to try out my ideas, to the colleagues who invited me or accepted
my papers, and to the audiences, whose feedback has been invaluable. I
would particularly like to thank the staff and students of Randolph College
(then Randolph-Macon Women’s College) in Lynchburg, Virginia, for the
opportunity to explore my ideas in classes on Victorian history, American
literature, environmental studies, evolution and animal behaviour, as well
as in a public lecture, during a week as a visiting professor in 2007. I would
like too to thank the staff of the Bodleian Library, the British Library and
the library of the Royal Society.
Individually, I am most indebted to David Amigoni, Doug Shedd and
Rebecca Stott, whose advice, encouragement, friendship and practical
support have been indispensable. I am particularly grateful too to Geoff
Harvey, Simon Eliot, Ronan McDonald and Dinah Birch, who were all
instrumental in getting this work off the ground, and to my commission-
ing editor Máiréad McElligott and her colleagues at Edinburgh University
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acknowledgements
Press for accepting the book for publication and seeing it through into
print. Other friends and colleagues who have helped and encouraged me
along the way, and without whom this book would not be what it is, include
Marie Banfi eld, Ian Bell, Giles Bergel, Kirstie Blair, Barrie Bullen, Alice
Jenkins, Mike Londry, Peter Middleton, Keith Moore, Kirsten Shepherd-
Barr, Helen Small, Kelley Swain, Andrew van der Vlies, Marianne van
Remoortel and Michael Whitworth, and my copy editor Felicity Marsh.
As always, my mother, Margaret Holmes, has been a great help, reading
plans and proposals with a frankness born of unbreakable affection on
both sides, while the keen interest that both my parents have taken in my
work has been an encouragement throughout. I would also like to take
this opportunity to thank Isobel Armstrong and Angela Leighton, whose
masterly readings of sonnets by Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti at the
conference in Ghent inspired me to try my hand at more formalist readings
of poems myself. (Needless to say, any mistaken scientifi c claims, stylistic
faults and other errors remain strictly my own.) Finally, I want to thank
Jo, Amy and (latterly) Hannah, for making the last few years while I have
been writing this book the happiest of my life so far.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permis-
sion to reproduce material in this book previously published elsewhere.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if any have been
inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to make the neces-
sary arrangement at the fi rst opportunity.
‘Questionable Procedures’, from Sumerian Vistas by A. R. Ammons.
Copyright © 1987 by A. R. Ammons. Used by permission of W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc.
Philip Appleman, ‘Waldorf-Astoria Euphoria, The Joy of Big Cities’ and
‘How Evolution Came to Indiana’ from New and Selected Poems, 1956-
1996. Copyright © 1984, 1996 by Philip Appleman. Reprinted with
the permission of the University of Arkansas Press.
‘Kew Gardens’, from Collected Poems, 1964-1987 by D. M. Black. Copyright
© 1991 by D. M. Black. Reproduced by permission of Birlinn Ltd.
www.birlinn.co.uk
‘Sea-Hawk’, from Collected Poems 1930-1986 by Richard Eberhart.
Copyright © 1987 by Richard Eberhart. Reprinted by permission of
Oxford University Press. Permission to publish outside North America
granted by the Richard Eberhart Estate.
‘Design’, ‘The Oven Bird’, ‘The Most of It’ and ‘Our Hold on the Planet’,
from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem,
published by Jonathan Cape. Copyright © 1916, 1968, 1969 Henry
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acknowledgements
Holt and Company, copyright © 1936, 1940, 1942, 1944 by Robert
Frost, copyright © 1964, 1970 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Reprinted
by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC, and The Random
House Group Ltd.
‘Adultery’ and ‘The Garden of the Gods’, from Collected Poems by Thom
Gunn. Copyright © 1994 by Thom Gunn. Reprinted by permission of
Faber and Faber Ltd and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
‘Rock and Hawk’, copyright 1934 and renewed 1962 by Donnan Jeffers and
Garth Jeffers, ‘Vulture’, copyright © 1963 by Garth Jeffers and Donnan
Jeffers, from Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers by Robinson Jeffers. Used
by permission of Random House, Inc.
‘The Fawn’ and ‘I shall forget you presently, my dear’, by Edna St Vincent
Millay. Copyright © 1922, 1934, 1950, 1962 by Edna St Vincent
Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth
Barnett, Literary Executor, The Millay Society.
‘Eohippus’, ‘The Archaeopteryx’s Song’ and ‘Trilobites’ by Edwin Morgan,
from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1990 by Edwin Morgan. Reprinted
by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
Pattiann Rogers, ‘The Possible Suffering of a God During Creation,’
‘Geocentric,’ and ‘Against the Ethereal,’ in Song of the World Becoming:
New and Collected Poems 1981-2001 (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions,
2001). Copyright © 2001 by Pattiann Rogers. Reprinted with permis-
sion from Milkweed Editions.
‘My Father Shaving Charles Darwin’, from A Spillage of Mercury by Neil
Rollinson. Copyright © 1996 by Neil Rollinson. Reprinted with per-
mission from the author.
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