So much one man can do / That does both act and know

[steepholm]

I'm not very good at remembering the names of flowers, trees or fungi. Consequently, when I go on a nature ramble, I find myself admiring these organisms and wishing I knew what to call them. It can be rather frustrating.

It's not just that I'd feel smarter (or at least not culpepperly stupid) if I did, but I suspect that knowing their names would give me access to other kinds of knowledge. Being able to label a tree "hornbeam" would unlock a casket of information - botanical, folkloric and etymological - all of which would combine and support one another, enriching my overall experience. I would probably remember my experiences more sharply, too, were I able to label objects more precisely.

That's one side of the equation. On the other, part of me thinks I should "let it all wash over me" - the world, that is - without this obsessive compulsion to assign everything a name. I should be content to be part of creation, and feel no need to be its Boswell - a role that, if anything, takes me further from the Quelle, and hence from wisdom.

I was reminded of this perennial quandary by an exchange in the comments of my last-but-one post, in which L. Lee Lowe quoted Philip Roth on the general uselessness (or at least superfluity) of literary critics. I suggested that his argument was in some ways analogous to that of people who say that you should just just live life rather than reading about it in literature, but it occurs to me that the tension between floating along in the stream and sitting on the bank sketching the stream is a much more general one even than that.

Neither position in its pure form is very satisfactory. But where should analysis end and participation begin? Is there any general rule of thumb? So far, the only one that occurs to me is that writing this post puts me way too far over on the analytical end of the spectrum.

Comments

[gillo]

Get an "Observer's Book of", so you can feel prepared but don't need to memorise stuff. You can then feel good about knowing you can look it up without feeling pressured actually to do so.

A book is nearly always The Answer.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I do have some books of that kind, but except in the easiest cases I don't find them easy to use, because I've already forgotten the relevant details by the time I come to look things up, and the stuff I've made a point of remembering turns out to apply to at least 60 different species.

[larryhammer]

Heh. I go around with this, as getting/having gotten degrees in physics seems to provoke people to disclaiming that knowing too much about nature takes the wonder out of it -- when instead, I find knowing exactly how a rainbow gets made only adds to my wonderment.

Having recently spent a year writing a poem a day about observing my local natural history, I can say that yes, knowing and deploying the correct names makes for sharper memories -- not to mention better poetry. (And makes talking with others about what you've seen easier.) But contrariwise, only when I "let it wash over me" without overintellectualizing the experience can I get good poetry. Precise observations, of self as well as nature, was what was needed. I had to live in a different mental place than I had, to do this well.

---L.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I remember an anecdote about Nabokov, in which an aspiring young writer came to visit him, and N pointed outside and challenged him to name the species of the tree in his garden. When the writer confessed himself unable to do so, Nabokov declared, "Then you will never be a novelist."

The moral, of course, is that Nabokov could be a real arsehole - but still.

I'm with you (and against Keats) on rainbows. Mind, it strikes me that there's a significant difference between understanding a process and being able to name all the constituent parts involved. But it's not an absolute difference, and someone whose anatomy never gets beyond "The knee bone's connected to the shin bone" is still unlikely to pass medical school.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I wonder what Nabokov would say if one had a nickname for the kind of tree in one's garden? For instance, our family refers to Chinese scholar trees as "cheerleader trees," due to their yay-team pom-pom blossoms. Certain kinds of cypress are "Dr. Seuss trees." Etc.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for Nabokov, but I think it's neat!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I find knowing exactly how a rainbow gets made only adds to my wonderment.

Me too! In fact that's my private definition of a geek. To some people if you take away the "magic" something seems diminished, but to me it has the opposite effect and it becomes even more amazing. I also agree totally with what you say about observation of the precise detail not being the same as knowing the correct technical name for things.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Then there is Walt Whitman's obnoxious and irritating poem.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that is obnoxious. I hope he fell in a ditch.

[larryhammer]

Yeah. That one. Feh.

---L.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I remember reading some Verne (Le Sphynx des Glaces) and later some Balzac (Illusions perdues) and not understanding the technical terms (types of ship, parts of printing presses, respectively). Looking up the words in English seemed helpful. But then after doing this a few times, I realized that the English only gave me an artifact of familiarity: I'd seen those words before, but didn't know anymore about what they really referred to or how they differed from each other than I did in French.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

:) I've had that experience too! How many years did I clutch to myself the knowledge of how to pronounce "forecastle", before I realised that I had no idea what a forecastle was...

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Or, why I've never been able to get interested in Patrick O'Brian.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Seems to me I remember C.S. Lewis being very happy when some friends took him into their herb garden and introduced him to the actual sight, smell, and taste of a great many plants he'd only ever read about in medieval and Renaissance literature (or if he had run into them in cookery, hadn't known what they were). Whether he remembered them afterwards, who knows.

And there's always Oswald Bastable and his yarrow, meadow-sweet, etc.

"We went along the towing-path; it is shady with willows, aspens, alders, elders, oaks and other trees. On the banks are flowers--yarrow, meadow-sweet, willow herb, loosestrife, and lady's bed-straw. Oswald learned the names of all these trees and plants on the day of the picnic. The others didn't remember them, but Oswald did. He is a boy of what they call relenting memory."

" We saw no wild beasts, but there were more different kinds of wild flies and beetles than you could believe anybody could bear, and dragon-flies and gnats. The girls picked a lot of flowers. I know the names of some of them, but I will not tell you them because this is not meant to be instructing. So I will only name meadow-sweet, yarrow, loose-strife, lady's bed-straw and willow herb--both the larger and the lesser."

Oh, and I love the discussion of whether pizhina is the same thing as tansy, Rainfarn, or la barbotine in Rebecca West's The Birds Fall Down. " 'We're lost unless a cook comes into the carriage, or someone carrying a German-French dictionary,' said Nikolai." How many online conversations I have had like that!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oswald is adorable!

Naming

[l. lee lowe (from livejournal.com)]

And then there's the related problem with which I'm currently grappling: what do I call flowers, trees, or fungi in my alternate world? Their names need to resonate in at least a couple of ways without becoming overly symbolic.

Usually I feel that you can tell if a writer is really intimate with his named objects, plants included - a good example is M John Harrison's novel Climbers, which I'm currently reading. In other words, Nabokov is not entirely right but not entirely wrong either!

Re: Naming

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a tricky one about names in alternate worlds. You can make names up, of course, but you might well lose more in comprehensibility and imaginative purchase than you gain in purity of conception.

I notice that Tolkien kept a lot of the names we have, but threw in a few extra species such as the mallorn, which is an odd solution but seemed to work well for him.