For contemporary writers the question of nature is unavoidably a complex one, imbued with ideas from earlier periods as well as the new issues raised by the changing way in which humans live: for many of us, nature and animals are now a matter of tourism rather than part of our everyday lives. JM Coetzee, in his novel Disgrace, and the poet Elizabeth Bishop both struggle to come to terms with this distance and explore the possibility of communication between the human and animal worlds.

For Coetzee this issue is part of a wider discussion of communication and its failure. Early in the book the protagonist, David Lurie, denies the existence of an animal’s soul during a conversation with his daughter, Lucy: ‘"We are of a different order of creation from the animals. Not higher necessarily, just different."’ It is only after the trauma of the rape and robbery and his subsequent, arrogant attempts to reason with her are rejected that he begins to feel anything for the animals he encounters. Lurie is disturbed by the fate of two sheep due to be slaughtered, but when he approaches them he finds ‘communion with animals’ is ‘[s]ome trick he does not have’ and contemptuously dismisses such a trick as the province of ‘a certain kind of person...with fewer complications.’ As if angered by his failure to find meaningful communication here, he reiterates his view that animals do not have a soul and later makes himself eat a mutton chop from one of the sheep.

Nonetheless, Lurie is forced to adjust his views as he becomes more involved with the local animal clinic. He goes to pains to confer dignity on the bodies of dogs that have been put down, sending them into the hospital incinerator himself to save them from scavengers and indifferent workers. He laughs at himself for becoming ‘a dog undertaker’ and then more harshly adds: ‘He saves the honour of corpses because there is no one else stupid enough to do it. That is what he is becoming: stupid, daft, wrongheaded.’

Eventually, however, as his contact with humans diminishes and breaks down, Lurie becomes more reliant on the animals and so, for his ego’s sake, allows them to increase in his estimation. One dog in particular becomes important to him – though he will not admit it – because it seems to take an interest in his opera. He himself admits it will never have a human audience, and so this last attempt at communication through culture ultimately leads him back to nature. It seems, though, that Lurie finds this non-human contact unsatisfactory or even threatening. Throughout the novel, he seeks to strengthen his subjectivity by making others objects, in the form of things that need protection. First his student Melanie, then the violated Lucy reject such patronage, so he turns to the dogs, figuring himself as their saviour; when he begins to feel something for one particular animal it threatens his egotism so he decides to sacrifice it. The novel ends with this scene of Christian imagery as Lurie brings this favoured dog to be put down:

This dénouement is highly ambiguous considering Lurie’s earlier insistence on animals not having a soul and his persistent failure to achieve genuine communication with anyone. It may be that he turns to animals because they cannot and will not impose the kind of moral judgement that he rejects at the university; but when he comes to recognise that he and Bev administer love as well as lethal injections he is too challenged and so sacrifices the dog to maintain his own overarching subjectivity. In this way Coetzee uses the relationship between the human and animal worlds to illustrate the foibles and failings of his central character.

Elizabeth Bishop also uses this opposition to explore the limits of communication. She examines the ways humans make contact with and react to nature in several poems and it becomes a recurrent theme throughout her life’s work; a notable early example is ‘The Fish’. While David Lurie, for all his fascination with the Romantic poets, never really achieves a feeling for nature, many critics have commented on the Wordsworthian quality of this poem: Jeredith Merrin notes its ‘evocation of almost religious joy and awe in the presence of embodied nature.’ It is not simply an ode to nature, however. Bishop’s use of damaged man-made materials – ‘ancient wallpaper’ (l. 11), ‘tarnished tinfoil’ (l. 38) and ‘scratched isinglass’ (l. 40) – in similes about the fish’s appearance indicate a failure to connect with the creature on its own terms. This is embodied by the fish’s collection of hooks and broken lines, evidence that it has previously managed to sever contact with humans. James McCorkle comments that when the fish shifts its eyes ‘but not / To return my stare’ (ll. 41-2) it becomes clear that any anthropomorphic, reflexive relationship is being debunked and that the poem becomes about seeing oneself with another. In other words, he is arguing that it portrays a moment when the narrator becomes aware of his or her own subjectivity and the fish is no longer merely an object. However, as Kalstone describes, ‘the poem has the air of summoning up a creature from the speaker’s own inner depths – the surviving nonhuman resources of an earlier creation.’ Therefore ‘The Fish’ – and the fish – both foreground and collapse the distinction between subject and object. The ending, ‘And I let the fish go’ (l. 76), is therefore ambiguous: has the speaker too much empathy for the fish to kill it, or is the epiphany (literally) slipping through their fingers?

A similar pattern emerges in a later poem, ‘The Moose.’ As the bus passes through New England the natural and man-made features of the landscape blur together:

(ll. 19-24)

This bodes well for the possibility of communion between man and nature, as does the presence of dogs which, as in Disgrace, are a bridge between the human and animal worlds. However, when the moose finally makes an appearance in line 133 no such communication is achieved. The human passengers speak of it in human terms: ‘"It’s awful plain"’ (l. 149) and the poet describes it almost exclusively in terms of buildings:

After the encounter the natural smell of the animal is displaced by the very artificial smell of petrol.

The title of the poem leads the reader constantly to expect a moose to appear, and Bishop’s deferment of it until the last quarter creates an expectation that something extraordinary and meaningful will come out of it. The prosaic reaction of the humans and the ineffability of the animal are disappointing, and one shares in the sense of an opportunity lost. Bishop goes further; by overstating its effect on the passengers - ‘Why, why do we all feel / (we all feel) this sweet / sensation of joy?’ (ll. 154-6) – she implies that it is their very desire to have communion with the natural world that stops them achieving it. By being too keen to identify an epiphanic moment as it happens, one destroys it, and all the passengers and the readers come away with is that nature is ‘curious’ (l. 157) and unknowable.

‘Crusoe in England’ portrays the famous island man after his rescue and return. His recollections of life on the desert island make clear that nature remained alien to him despite his total detachment from civilisation. Merrin notes that Crusoe ‘does not feel a Wordsworthian "bliss of solitude"’; in fact, he cannot even remember this phrase when he tries to recall ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud.’ Though there is a suggestion that the creatures of the island would accept him – ‘The goats were white, so were the gulls, / and both too tame, or else they thought / I was a goat, too, or a gull’ (ll. 101-3) – he craves culture and human company. Communion with nature does not enrich but bore him; he complains, ‘The island had one kind of everything’ (l. 68). The things he enjoys, such as wordplay, alcohol and music, are by definition human pursuits, and the arrival of Friday on the island still stirs his thoughts more than anything else. Crusoe’s actions in dying the baby goat red ‘just to see / something a little different’ (l. 126-7) demonstrate his inability to connect with the animals on the island. His position is an extreme extension of the sort of disassociation Bishop considers in her other poems: nature is not a satisfactory Other and without human contact Crusoe loses his sense of self.

Coetzee and Bishop both use nature as a motif to explore human relationships and psychology. For these two contemporary writers it proves an elusive force, and ultimately unable to replace human interaction, as much as we might long for communion with it. Our difference to animals continues to be an intriguing topic for writers, and a revealing tool in their considerations of human nature.

Bishop, Elizabeth, Complete Poems (London: Chatto & Windus) 1983

Coetzee, JM, Disgrace (London: Vintage) 2000

‘On "The Fish"’ webpage at http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/bishop/crusoe.htm

‘On "Crusoe in England"’ webpage at http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/bishop/crusoe.htm

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