Without language, Ovid is lost, a child who has to relearn “Will I have to learn everything all over again, like a small child?” Through words, the land itself comes into existence, experienced as if for the first time. Ovid undergoes a cyclical progression where he finds himself “more and more often slipping back to my childhood”, and this relation is shown in the prologue where Ovid as a boy says, “There is something in our nature that we share with wolves.” Malouf portrays that in isolation you notice important things that would otherwise go unnoticed, as the traumatized poet gradually awakens to the simple beauties of nature. Ovid’s finding of a familiar flower, a poppy, in the wilderness, evokes for him the magical power of language to construct human reality, as indicated by his exhilaration, “Poppy, you have saved me, you have recovered the earth for me”. Wordsworth, too, throughout much of his poetry makes a connection with the child in conveying ideas about the evolution of spiritual consciousness. In “Tintern Abbey” Wordsworth uses a reflective tone to recapture the sense of harmony between humanity and nature he once experienced as a child. During his years away the beauty of the landscape had remained a vivid memory, nourishing his spirit in difficult times,
“Though absent long, these forms of beauty have not been to me, as is a landscape to a blind man’s eye”
We are consistently reminded that nature should be the “food for future years” by which to survive by. The “wild secluded” images of nature cause the speaker to have not only, “Thoughts of a more deep seclusion”, but also have offered “sensations sweet/ Felt in the blood and felt along the heart.” In contrast to the negative connotations of the “weary”, “unprofitable” days of civilization, nature metaphorically takes the role of “The nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart and soul of all my moral being.” Wordsworth’s Romantic elevated language expresses the emotions of humanity, using the device of pathetic fallacy. Wordsworth comes to see that manmade constructions are essentially worthless; but, through nature, he feels more at comfort with the world. Similarly, in An Imaginary Life Ovid connects on an enlightened level to nature and experiences a rebirth into his childhood persona; humanity at one with the world.
With the capture of the wild boy, Ovid begins to recognize the inextricable links between humanity and the natural world. With the help of nature, in the form of the Child, Ovid will ‘creep back’ to the earth once again. The Child, through speaking the language of the birds, metaphorically becomes a bird in Ovid’s eyes, as if the birds ‘had their life in him’. Nature is accessible, it is here that the Child, acting as a catalyst, opens up Ovid’s soul and allows it to fill with the knowledge of nature.
“Slowly I begin the final metamorphosis. I must drive out my old self and let the universe in”.
It is here that Malouf’s representation of the Child is communicated; he is a symbol of nature and represents the ultimate level of communion with the natural environment. At the end of the novel, it is Ovid’s visionary tone to see himself “turning into the landscape” that he fully understands tno boundaries exists between ‘human’ and ‘nature’.
Without shared communication, culture or civilization, Ovid re-discovers nature and separates from his conditioned comfort which has been entirely dependent on a highly sophisticated language. Wordsworth, writing 200 years earlier, explores the evolving relationship between humanity and the natural world through maturity. The ‘Prelude’, is a portrayal of the growth of Wordsworth’s mind. It is during a reminiscence of his youthful adventures that Wordsworth comes to discover the existence of a spiritual presence in nature, appearing in the form of ‘low breathings coming after me’ and the perception of ‘strange utterances’ in the wind. Wordsworth understands that as part of humanity and nature, he must respect the balance nature provides and move with it, rather than control it.
“Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought, That giv’st to forms and images a breath and everlasting motion”.
Much like the way in which Ovid was taught by the Child, a symbol of nature, Wordsworth is taught by nature itself. His respect for nature, which has developed from childhood, has transformed his personality and led to an understanding of the spiritual truths which exist in nature, shown by his gratitude “Thanks to the means which nature designed to employ.”
Wordsworth shows that as a child, and all children, that only a life lived close to nature has any substance as it had played the role of both a parent and a teacher to him. In An Imaginary Life, Ovid, too, is keen to learn from his experiences in the wild, and each frontier crossed represents a development of his mind and spirit, eventually accepting the world of humanity and nature as one.
We observe a very basic similarity in both the writers’ approach to the wild – both believe that nature has a positive influence on those human beings who venture into it. Wordsworth’s understanding of humanity’s relationship with the natural world, then, is based on this idea that through nature we can transcend the every day experience of life and relate to the universe on a more spiritual basis. For Malouf, the divisions between the landscape and humans are completely broken down, which brings an understanding that there is always continuity between humans and the earth. Whether we understand nature or just respect it, there is always a relationship between humanity and the world.
