Concepts of Nature

Cross-cultural comparisons over a long time-scale are notoriously problematic. Not only does each culture change substantially over the course of the period but, even within their own boundaries, both are far from homogeneous. In what follows I will explore conceptions of the natural world in pre-modern Europe and China by looking, in a non-rigorous way, at examples of nature poetry from the fourth century ad to the start of the early-modern era. The hope is that these works can help to illuminate not only long-term commonalities and differences between the two traditions, but also some sense of the patterns of change within them. Far apart though Chinese and European literary sensibilities with regard to the natural world were at various times, they could also at moments draw close to each other. It would be a mistake to assume that the mental universes inhabited by educated Chinese and educated Europeans were totally distinct.footnote¹

‘Nature poetry’—where the natural world itself is the main focus of interest and not just a background setting, however superbly describedfootnote²—was written in Western classical antiquity, as well as in China, even though those who have some familiarity with both traditions would probably give the latter pride of place.footnote³ As an example of the former we may take the Mosella, a long description in Latin of the Moselle River by Ausonius, who came from Burdigala, today Bordeaux, and rose to become tutor to the future emperor Gratian. It was finished some time not long after ad 371, and shares several features with the rhapsodies (fu) written by Chinese poets on aspects of the natural world, including cityscapes, around broadly the same time.footnote⁴ A few brief extracts follow.footnote⁵ In the first of these, the poet is coming out of a forest road, and catches his initial glimpse of the river:

Clearer the air hereabouts, and unclouded the rays of the sunshine
showing the bright-hued heavens divine, illumined and tranquil.
Now, no more are the skies, under cross-linked branches entangled,
mutually chained, and unseen, by the green gloom rendered invisible.

The atmosphere, freed from restraints, not begrudging us visions of sunbeams,
pours forth roseate gold from the firmament, when we behold them.
Prospects where everything calls to my mind fond dreams of my homeland—
Bordeaux’s culture—its brilliant refinement—lie spread out before me.

Villas’ rooves surge from the crests overhanging the plunging escarpments,
vines climb the viridian hills, their delight-giving rivulets merging
with the inaudibly talking, and gliding, Mosella below them.

In the next passage the poet addresses the river directly, though at one point he shifts for a moment, slightly disconcertingly, to apostrophizing an imagined reader. The theme is the flowing of the waters seen from far away, then closer up, and finally under the surface:

Twofold the routes you allot us: first—downstream—borne by the current,
such that the swift-beating oars will set roiling its eddying waters;
else up, along the embankment, as, slack’ning no moment, the tow-rope
pulls taut the mast-linked harness attached to the barge-dragging boatmen.
Many a time you must muse, when observing your river’s meanders,
your slow course, as ordained by your fate, may be close to too leisured.
You would not border your shorelines with sedges that slime has engendered,
nor yet contaminate strands with impurities, making them cropless.
Down to the brink, where the spring-clear water begins, we step dryshod.
Go now! Tessellate smooth floors, fitting the Phrygian inlays;
under your halls’ fretted patterns extend—wide plain-like expanses of marble.
Nothing care I for these luxuries given by lands and by riches,
awestruck at Nature’s creations.—Not mine the trusteeship for grandsons.
Happy the penury richly abundant in things to abandon.