The Shelleys at Chamonix: an Ecology of Mont Blanc

A proto-ecological approach to nature can be detected in three domains in which natural phenomena are described. This seems to authorize animation of several kinds of natural features. A different understanding of the sublime? "We always contemplate objects and ideas with a disposition similar to their nature" (Gerard, An Essay On Taste 3rd ed., 1780, p. 12)

Presence
-- a sense of the defining influence of landforms on life
landforms, i.e., cliffs, ravines, mountains [150] Though it embraced a vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our path

"The secret strength of things / Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome / Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!" (139-141)

Community
--
the network of interrelated lifeforms
natural life: forest, flowers, animals, insects

[151] forests inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty -- intermingling beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road

"Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, / Children of elder time" (21-2)

Autonomy
-- the intrinsic and wayward force of water
rivers, waterfalls, lakes*

[150] the very roaring of the untameable Arve

"the rushing torrents' restless gleam, / Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling / Meet in the vale" (121-3)

*glaciers? Cf "The glaciers creep / Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains / Slow rolling on" (100-102). And see Ramond below.

Other examples from Romantic period writers, Bourrit and Ramond on glaciers, and Gilpin; and Ruskin

Presence: We beheld a spacious icey plain entirely level; upon this there rose a mountain all of ice, with steps ascending to the top, which seemed the throne of some divinity. (Bourrit, Relation of a Journey, 112). Another: It is a valley so contracted, that it affords room for little more than the river, and a path at the bottom; while the mountains, on each side, are so perpendicular, that their summits are scarce more asunder than their bases. It was a new idea. Many mountains we had seen hanging over the sides of vallies: but to be immured for a space of almost three miles, within a chasm of rifted rocks, (for that was in fact the idea presented by the scene before us,) was a novel circumstance, tho we had now been two or three days the inhabitants of mountains. (Gilpin, Lakes 217-8 -- Watenlath). Of slaty mountainsides: from the lowest valley to the highest clouds, all is theirs -- one adamantine dominion and rigid authority of rock. We yield ourselves to the impression of their eternal, unconquerable stubbornness of strength; their mass seems the least yielding, least to be softened, or in anywise dealt with by external force, of all earthly substance. (Ruskin, Modern Painters, IV, 156-7)

Community: In the most distant retreat, in deserts where I do not find the footsteps of man, I find a family of birds, which is the emblem of our own; a republic of insects, which recalls the idea of our nations; their industry, their relations and antipathies. (Ramond 334). Of trees: For the resource of trees are not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neither their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced to choose their ways of various life where there is contracted room for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. (Ruskin 430-1)

Autonomy: The inhabitant of the plain beholds with astonishment the invader [a glacier] protruding amidst his harvests, bid defiance even to the sun by which they are ripened; the shepherd, seeking refuge at the foot of the precipice, perceives it with terror, mounting the tops of the steep which separated him from it, and deluging his abode with torrents and avalanches. (Ramond 302-03). A Lake District waterfall: The water falls within a few yards of the eye, which being rather above it's level, has a long perspective view of the stream, as it hurries from the higher grounds; tumbling, in various, little breaks, through it's rocky channel, darkened with thicket, till it arrive at the edge of the precipice, before the window; from whence it rushes into the bason, which is formed by nature in the native rock. (Gilpin on Rydal Falls, Lakes 169-70)


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Document created September 23rd 2003