Ovid’s experience in Tomis also teaches him morally. On a hunting party, he is able to release the guilt he bore for being “the son who should have died”. Ovid remembers how he had become distanced from his father and how this unhappiness had become a burden on his life. As part of his experience of escape and rebirth, in exile in the wild, he now finds that the cold breath of his dead father’s disapproval upon his back has lifted, “now, suddenly, the sunlight upon my back is warm. We see how, in the wild, he learns that he was wrong to behave in that way towards his father – Nature in the role of a parent.
Ovid also learns about language. Malouf draws our attention to the fact that language is a means to define and describe our view, but it also restricts our view. The language of speech, for example Latin, is one of complexity and hierarchal style. On the other hand, the language of silence has a style of harmony and simplicity. It is the language of nature.
Ovid reflects that the true language is the silence in which the Child and he communicated when they first met. It is a language “whose every syllable is a gesture of reconciliation”, so different from Latin, with its careful distinctions, divisions and discriminations.
Ovid’s experience also results in him increasing his understanding of himself and his place in the world:
I feel myself cracking. I feel myself loosen and flow again, reflecting the world.
The experience of Wordsworth in nature is different from Ovid’s, as Wordsworth grew up in nature and later returned to it on several occasions. Unlike Ovid, he never lost his link with natural world.
Wordsworth grew up in the midst of nature in the Lake District of England. He lost his parents at an early age and what makes his relationship with nature so ‘close’ is that nature assumed for him the role of foster parent, guide and mentor. “Fair seed had my soul and I grew up fostered alike by beauty and by fear.”
Wordsworth recalls, revives and re-creates memories in ‘The Prelude’ and in this poem we see how nature taught Wordsworth like a parent teaches a child. In his youthful adventures, as a boy, he had the sense of “low breathings coming after me”, he could hear a ‘strange utterance’ in the wind.
This spiritual presence in nature forced him to reconsider some of his actions, like the stealing of a boat. In these ways, nature gave young Wordsworth lessons in morality. We also witness that in nature he too, like Ovid, learns about the true language of silence, “What need of many words?”
In ‘Tintern Abbey’, we see how Wordsworth goes back to the Abbey of Tintern and gains knowledge about life in civilised societies. The five years of his being away from nature were depriving, “the length of five long winters.” Hence, there is a sense of contempt and fear of society, “dreary intercourse of daily life.” The city is described using negative language. It is noisy and crowded. We note the words ‘burden’, ‘heavy’ and ‘weary’ as well as the polysyllabic word ‘unintelligible’, which stands out and conveys a sense of confusion. Civilisation, to Wordsworth, is ‘unprofitable’ and “the fever of the world.” Further, we get the most authentic indication of nature’s ability to expose and educate when he refers to it as: “The anchor of my purest thoughts.”
In ‘The Solitary Reaper’, Wordsworth contemplates a girl alone in nature performing a simple agricultural task. She is being sustained solely by nature and thus Wordsworth learns of nature’s role as the sustainer. The girl also sings and her song ‘overflows’ the valley and permeates everything that is near. Her singing is compared to birds such as the nightingale and cuckoo, indicating that she is fully attuned to the natural world. The speaker does not so much ‘hear’ the song or decipher its meaning but is inundated by its overpowering spiritual sense. Here we notice how Wordsworth is taught of nature’s ability to provide a satisfying life for those who live ‘close’ to nature.
Therefore, 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. They both show through their literature that the experience in nature exposes and educates.
USMAN