Food,Garden and Personage:An Intertextual Study of Two Paradises

Chen Haoran

Capital Normal University,Beijing,100048,China

Email:chenhaoran@vip.126.com

[Abstract] The contemporary American poet Gary Snyder is known to express his unique spirits in the counterculture movement.Scholars are aware of the fact that he has been drawing ideas from eastern philosophies,especially those from countries like China and Japan.However,knowing Snyder also has had serious doubts towards the mainstream belief of western world,few have explored his criticism of western core belief.This paper seeks to find his countercultural spirit in his struggling against western culture in his poetic work"Milton by Firelight".Since Milton's"Paradise"is authoritative enough to be called the canon of western belief,reading Snyder's rewriting of Milton's Paradise Lost may be feasible.When exploring this idea from the perspectives of garden,food and person,Snyder can be said to rival or even exceed John Milton.By rewriting Milton's Paradise Lost,Snyder challenges the main-stream of western beliefs.

[Keywords] Snyder;Milton;garden;food;personage

Introduction

John Milton(1608-1674)is a prominent British poet of the 17th century.Under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell,Milton was actively involved in the struggle against absolute monarchy.As a devout Christian,Milton publishedParadise Lostin 1674,which not only expressed the despair after the failure of the revolution,but also revealed an optimistic attitude towards human capabilities.Nearly three hundred years later,the American poet Gary Snyder(1930-),a famous contemporary American poet,essayist,and translator,as well as a Zen believer and environmentalist,created the poem named "Milton by Firelight",which built a bridge between the American“Beat Generation”and Milton from the perspective of religion and nature.

Snyder is a representative figure of American counter-culture movement,closely related to Eastern Zen Buddhism.He was raised on a dairy farm in the Pacific Northwest.He graduated with a B.A.in anthropology from Reed College and worked as a logger in the Pacific Northwest before going to Berkeley to study Asian languages from 1953 to 1956.During this time,he also met Allen Ginsberg,Jack Kerouac,and many of the other writers identified with the Beat Movement.Also,dissatisfied with the status quo,Snyder has been trying to seek a change to the status quo to fight against the mainstream culture.Therefore,"Snyder found the East and Buddhism".(Zhang,2015,p.12)Snyder moved to Japan to study Buddhism,an experience that deeply influenced his poetry.Snyder has been studying culture of the American Indians and that of the ancient Buddhism out of a genuine desire to learn wisdom from these traditions and rituals.In fact,Snyder began to translate the works of Han Shan,a Chinese eighth-century hermit poet.At the same time,he practiced Zen in Japan and became a disciple of Miura as a Buddhist disciple.

His experience in China helped him figure out one alternative way to rethink and reconsider what it means to be the western stronghold of popular culture."Milton by Firelight" is one of the relatively rare works in Snyder's poems that express counterculture ideas by confronting traditional Christian creeds and rewriting what has already been accepted as doctrine.

Why He Read Milton

When writing this poem,Snyder was studying at the University of California,Berkeley,and after studying,he went to work at the observation deck of Yosemite National Park.According to Patrick Murphy:"Studious as always,Snyder would have taken books along to read,apparently including Milton'sParadise Lost." (Murphy,2007,p.214)We may wonder why Snyder chose to read Milton specifically?In the preface of"John Milton",the late Harold Bloom set Milton as one of the most competent exemplars in the mainstream of Western beliefs,together with poets like Calvin,Blake,and Spenser.It is pointed out that Milton liberated the human will and gained freedom,which is very similar to the humanistic worldview that advocated freedom in modern western society;also,hisParadise Losthas an unshakable position in the mainstream Christian tradition:applauding it as"a unique Puritan poem"(Bloom,2004,p.2)This explains Milton's important position in mainstream thought.

Comments from various critics on this poem abound.Snyder expert Wendell Berry held:"Milton took the world for granted,as modern urban people and modern politics have steadfastly continued to do." (Berry,2005,p.139) He further claimed that "the difference between John Milton and Gary Snyder is not primarily that between western and eastern cultures,or that between Europe and America,but that between a man would took the world for granted and the man would does not".(Berry,2005,p.139)This comparison of characters is worthy of recognition.However,if the poem is simply classified as an ecological poem,it will undoubtedly ignore the true value of its counter-mainstream culture.InThe San Francisco Renaissance:Poetics and Community at Mid-Century,Davidson(1989)went beyond the traditional ecological tone,and probed further from the image of Indian boy.This perspective clearly penetrated the surface of ecological poetry and laid the tone for subsequent research.However,he started with individual isolated images without digging deep into the reasons behind the specific images,so he is less explicit in showing the true intention of Snyder.The writer of this article,together with Yang Zhigang,also a researcher of English culture,once explored Snyder's criticism of Milton in the article "Reading Milton in the Wild:Gary Snyder's Rewriting ofParadise Lost" from nature,time and person,but in a much broader and less detailed way.This article aims at compensating this regret and exploring the nature images more subtly,so as to bring a more focused attention to Snyder's philosophical thoughts.

Based on the past researches,this paper holds that Paradise Lost created by Milton is the target of Snyder's intertextual irony.From the perspectives of"food concept","natural images"and"personages",Snyder's subtle rewriting can be seen as a tentative way to challenge the mainstream Christian culture on human existence.

How He Read Milton

Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text.Intertextual figures include:allusion,quotation,and parody.An example of intertextuality is an author's borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader's referencing of one text in reading another and that is exactly what Snyder has done.

"Milton by Firelight",a poem with four stanzas,varied in length from seven to twelve lines,is not a rather long poem filed in Snyder's first poetic collectionRiprap(1959).As its title suggests,the poem reviews the vision of John Milton from the perspective of one who is camping "by firelight".The poem opens with a stanza introduced by a line from Book IV of John Milton'sParadise Lost:"'O hell,what do mine eyes/with grief behold?'" The well-known and still revered Christian myth"of our lost general parents"is brought into Snyder's poem by this intertextual reference.This marks a transcendence of Milton's text and we can interpret it from three images of"food","garden",and"personage"respectively.

Food:Forbidden or to Enliven

Food serves as the important element in both of the text.The forbidden fruit in Milton's text caused the fall of mankind,but in Snyder's writing,it completely lost its religious significance.In the ninth volume ofParadise Lost,after traveling the earth,Satan goes like a fog at night to praise Eve who wanders alone.Eve is curious about the language ability of the snake,who tempts Eve to taste the fruit.Eventually,she is driven out of the"Garden of Eden"by God.Therefore,it can be seen that the forbidden fruit described by Milton is a contract between God and mankind,and eating the"forbidden fruit"without authorization will violate the agreement.Quite contrastingly,the fruit in Snyder's poem is nothing like an agreement between gods and people,but the source of nutrition for human life in the wilderness:"...a silly story/Of our lost general parents,/eaters of fruit?/The Indian,the chainsaw boy,/And a string of six mules/Came riding down to camp/Hungry for tomatoes and green apples."(Snyder,1990,p.9)So to speak,Snyder's forbidden fruit has acquired a sense of wild:it refuses to be a tool for Satan in the fable to destroy the covenant of man and God,but a simple source of nutrition;in addition,the fruit is accommodating:"the green apple"longed by Indian boys,together with"tomato",jointly participate in the formation of the food chain in the wilderness.In a word,apples in the wilderness are just food and eating apples is not different from eating tomatoes.The nutrition they provide is the key factor for human survival in the wilderness.

To sum up,Milton's food is forbidden,whereas Snyder's is to enliven.Snyder's wilderness is completely different from the harmonious and beautiful "Garden of Eden" described by Milton regarding nature.The images of rocks and apples in the wilderness have taken off the cloak of Christian divinity,and exist undisguisedly on the earth as they are in the uncarved manner.To survive in the wilderness,Snyder does not think it a big deal to savor the apple,since Snyder clearly states thus:"What use,Milton,a silly story/Of our lost general parents." The only feasible solution to the survival demonstrated in the poem is to obtain the lifestyle of the miners:"who can sense/The vein and cleavage/In the very guts of rock,can/Blast granite,build/Switchbacks that last for years."(Snyder,1990,p.9)Clearly,having a profound sense of place is far practical than carrying around stacks of didactic works.

Garden:Divine or Wilderness

Similarly,"the Garden of Eden",the forbidden fruit,and the personages in Christianity have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people,but this classic image has a completely different meaning in Snyder's eyes.As pointed out in the poem,Snyder wrote this poem at Piute Creek,a scenic spot in Yosemite National Park within the vast Sierra Nevada.This place is worthy of notice,since protestants in the United States have a special attachment to this place and they even regard it as the Garden of Eden:"The lush,loving description of Eden in this Puritan epic gave them such a vivid mental image of Paradise,which Yosemite strongly resembled.Reformed Protestants could recognize allusions to Milton.As Eden,Yosemite Valley called up religious feelings and became a place to worship,a temple made by divine hands."(Stoll,2008,p.238)Holy as it is,Snyder tries to show the divinity from his own eyes.

By rewriting the natural imagery in"Eden"(Yosemite),Snyder achieved a parody of Milton.Terry Gilfford's idea is convincing when he compares these two locales:"For Milton's focus is on moral choice,and his garden is more of a testing ground,a retreat that is both a celebration of the order of Creation and a seduction in its luxurious Arcadian discourse.That nature,Creation itself,must both be recognized and accepted in a complex theology."(Gilfford,1999,p.68)However,Snyder's "garden"is quite different:Snyder's nature is purely wild,a place fully expresses wildness.Whether there is life or not,everything can flourish according to its own laws.Therefore,the sacred garden in Milton'sParadise Lostno longer exists.Instead,it is replaced by a wilderness that does not rely on the divine.

As a distinctive object in the garden,"rock" claims to be an image loved by Snyder and Milton equally.In fact,in 1955 Snyder's first collection of poems,Riprap,uses rocks as the main line to explain poetic viewpoints.The original meaning is used to describe the use of stones of different sizes and irregular shapes in the mountains to make it easier for pedestrians and carriages to walk.In Paradise Lost,the images of rocks and lava serve as the symbols of hell and dark forces,for instance,in the third volume of Paradise Lost,when Satan descended to watch the world of Adam and Eve,he was standing in the"Niphates"mountain range in Armenia.However,the rocks in Snyder's poems abandon the religious veil of Christianity:"Working with an old/Singlejack miner,who can sense/The vein and cleavage/In the very guts of rock,can/Blast granite,build/Switchbacks that last for years/Under the beat of snow."(Snyder,1990,p.9) As is shown in the quote,the "rocks" and "granites" and "switchback" in the citations are all ordinary rocks in the wilderness.Davidson is persuasive when he claimed that"Here,In'Milton by Firelight',Milton's version of aParadise Lostthrough original sin is qualified by Snyder's version of a paradise perpetually rediscovered in the permanence of mountains and rock".(Davidson,1989,p.104)

Therefore,we may come to the safe conclusion that Milton's garden is divine,but Snyder's garden is purely wild.Thus,Snyder attempts to return words to the condition of stone.He constantly finds patterns carved in the stone that points to redemptive ways of living and thinking.The language in the poem is no longer the oracle written by Milton,nor the expression of fantasy and abstract thought,nor is it a tool to reflect the spiritual state of the modern world.In Snyder's wilderness,language has undergone a transformation process from being sacred to being quotidian,from being abstract to being substantial,and from being spiritual to being material.In a nutshell,the rock is a lost world for Milton,and a linguistic redemption for Snyder.

Personage:the Repentant or Inhabitant

Snyder's characters are the representatives of modern life.As modern people,especially urban dwellers,they are less likely to experience the law of the wilderness,while the poet yearns for being a natural person practicing the idea of the wilderness.Snyder's point is illustrated from two personages,the fruit-pickers and gold-diggers.

The fruit-pickers in Milton's writing are Adam and Eve,and they set as the contrast to the Indian boy in Snyder's writing.As pickers,they are full of awe for the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.When Satan appeared in the form of a snake,Eve,who was curious about its ability,tries to gain knowledge and abilities that God only possessed by tasting the fruit.Therefore,the reason why humans were banished from Garden of Eden is undoubtedly related to the eating of the forbidden fruit by Eve and Adam.In contrast,Snyder parodied this story by presenting the Indian boys,who"Came riding down to camp/Hungry for tomatoes and green apples."(Snyder,1990,p.9)The Indian boys act in line with the gustatory necessity,so to speak,without any touch of awe-feeling.Just like what Timothy Gray argued in his book Gary Snyder and the Pacific Rim:"Unlike Adam,these characters are not afraid to pluck the fruit from the tree.Their California is a new kind of Eden,immune to the harsh dictates of English Puritanism."(Gray,2006,pp.120-121) Snyder is portraying the fruit-pickers as boys who are innocent of Christian belief,and they are living at one with nature under the pure influence of wild thought.That is,Snyder rewrites Milton's symbolic apples in order to de-mystify Milton's canonical text.Therefore,Adam and Eve,who originally dared not taste the fruits in Christianity,are transformed into Indian boys who eat these fruits in the wilderness to make a living in this poem.

Mammon is the gold collector in Western belief,as Edmund Spenser showed in the second book of The Faerie Queene.Not surprisingly,Milton described Mammon as the one who commanded the fallen angels to build Pandemonium,the capital of Hell.When commenting on this event,Stoll claims that"when Mammon directed the fallen angels in mining gold for the construction of Hell's capital,Pandemonium.Paradise was lost due to the chief sin of greed,which led to worst abuse and ransack of the earth." (Stoll,2008,p.243) However,in contrasting to Milton's misbehaved diggers,Snyder's miner is presented with a decent occupation:"an old Singlejack miner,who can sense the vein and cleavage in the very guts of rock,can blast granite,build switchbacks that last for years." (Snyder,1990,p.9)It seems that Milton is more aware of the extent to which golden diggers have damaged the ecological environment.However,maintaining wild does not mean to keep nature untouched and untainted.Snyder's miner reflects the true lifestyle of humans in the wilderness.

Conclusion

Snyder is a man of the wild.By wild,I mean he is always trying to find the untainted,pure and innocent sparks in the wildness on earth.In his monumental poetic collection"No Nature:New and Selected Poems",he wrote in the title the very pronounced attitude toward nature.We may find it tricky if interpret it literally,but the simple truth is quite evident:Nature to him seemed to be word coined intentionally to suit in man's manipulation of the wild,and man's voluntary separation from it.If interpreting nature in this way,we find nature as a designated space either to simply relax ourselves,or to willfully throw our trashed,without worrying about the consequences.That is,by setting up a boundary between nature and culture,the believers of nature are actually alienating man from the surroundings they depend on.This violent split is caused by too much emphasis on the world"nature",which is exactly what Snyder finds unacceptable.Therefore,the emblematic title "No Nature",which expresses succinctly his ecological slogan,bridges the dichotomy between the spheres of culture and nature,and reunites those two as one,as man being part of the world,and being at one with the wild.Looking back at the poem,we can find the similar images like the Indian boys who feed on fruits,and the miner who depends on the mine for a living.

By comparing the two sets of nature,food and personages in the two works,we can see that Milton's "Garden of Eden"has become Snyder's fantasy.In order to integrate into the wilderness,Snyder not only subverted the image of the garden in the mainstream beliefs by practicing the wilderness life on his own,but also called the readers to rethink about the differences between wildness and holiness.Also,Snyder's food has lost its holy characteristic,but has regained its enlivening feature.Further,the characters are not limited to the guilty couple and the vile Satan,but extended to innocent survivors of the wild.Milton intended to proclaim divine control over the natural world.Snyder revolutionarily abandoned Milton's mainstream Christian tradition and pointed out that human beings should find their own place in the wilderness and achieve the rooted feeling in the wilderness.

Acknowledgments

This paper is part of the research of the General Social Science Project from Beijing Municipal Education Commission"Research on Animal Poetry in the British Romantic Period"(SM202010028002).