A Study of Levertov’s “A Tree Telling of Orpheus” in the Light of Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature

Introduction: The industrial development and rapid economic growth of the United States in the mid-twentieth century pushed the concept of nature to the margins. It is presumed that the literary pieces made during this period ignored nature to the advantage of the multilateral development of the country. However, some writers consciously or unconsciously opposed this mainstream and encouraged ecological awareness. This paper seeks to study Denise Levertov’s “A Tree Telling of Orpheus”—published in 1968—in the light of eco-phenomenology to disclose Levertov’s eco-consciousness embedded in her holistic and non-hierarchical attitude toward life, against her days' backdrop of the separation paradigm. Levertov’s early works mainly celebrate nature, but her later works are primarily distinguished as social and political. This research focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of ‘chiasm’ to reveal the reciprocally embodied participation between Orpheus and his natural surroundings, hidden in a shadow cast by political and spiritual analyses of this text.
Background of Study: Levertov’s poetry has been studied within the framework of various literary theories, mainly Marxism and feminism. The present study gains significance as it brings the interdisciplinary approach of eco-phenomenology to practical analysis of the human-nature relationship in “A Tree Telling of Orpheus.” In the late 1960s, the Vietnam War became the US government's top priority; most literary figures of this era addressed this issue in their works. Moreover, most of the critical studies have also focused on the political aspects of these pieces, ignoring their other elements. This poem, written in 1968—while the Vietnam War was still raging—has been no exception. In her paper “A Poetic Re-Telling of the Orphic Myth: A Political Study of Denise Levertov’s ‘A Tree Telling of Orpheus’,” Rana Jabir Obed holds that like Orphic music, the Vietnam War brought “appreciation and political awareness” to the youth (Obed 4). Other aspects of this work have also been noticed by critics. In “The Hasidic Context of Nature and Music in Denise Levertov’s Relearning the Alphabet,” Estra Gancarz-Jurek stated that Levertov’s concerns for the environment and music were derived from her Hasidic religion. What the present research intends to add to the existing corpus is to study the ecological aspect of this poetry from a different angle, ‘eco-phenomenology’, to disclose an awareness of a broader phenomenological world.
Methodology: The present research, as a qualitative and a descriptive one, embarks on library work and context analysis. The Main theoretical premise of this study is the eco-phenomenological concept of ‘chiasm’ put forth by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961). 'Eco-phenomenology,' as the point where philosophy and ecology meet, deals with environmental issues from a phenomenological viewpoint. Chiasm, “the reciprocal participation—between one’s own flesh and the encompassing flesh of the world” (Abram 81), dismantles the Cartesian mind/body dualism and its subsequent nature/culture distinction to open the body to the world. Emphasizing the notion of ‘embodiment,’ this study discloses the chiasmatic moments when nature and culture are intertwined. Here, the emphasis is placed on the music’s role in creating these holistic experiences.
Conclusion: This research rejected the transcendental subject in favor of the ‘body-subject’ by emphasizing the superiority of the body in the process of perception to reveal the mutually embodied participation between Orpheus and nature. Using literary devices like ‘anthropomorphism,’ ‘chremamorphism,’ ‘synesthesia,’ and ‘onomatopoeia,’ the boundary between humans and nature was blurred. Thus, a Cartesian, culture-nature outlook faded into a holistic one, and a corporeally blurred amalgam of Orpheus and the surrounding nature rose to the surface. Here, the emphasis was placed on music’s role in bringing these holistic experiences. It should be mentioned that the eco-phenomenological study of literary works can encourage a holistic attitude, preventing the destruction of the environment.