In his recent overview of North American environmental literature\u2014The Environmental Imagination (1995)\u2014Thoreauvian scholar and literary critic Lawrence Buell suggested four criteria by which to identify what he calls \u201c an environmentally oriented work, \u201d which may be applied equally to prose or poetry. In brief, these are:<\/p>\n
While the environment or, more commonly, \u201c nature, \u201d in some sense has been a common theme in poetry and other literary creations since time immemorial, many writers have found it difficult, or perhaps unimaginable, to write about nature or the environment from anything but a homocentric perspective. The \u201c green movement \u201d in Euro-American literature of recent decades (notably since the 1970s) has self-consciously endeavored to be more ecocentric in its themes and expressive genres. Indeed, environmental literature has emerged as a distinct specialization for younger cohorts of literary scholars, in both creative and critical dimensions, and there are both acknowledged leaders and admired precursors within this branch of the literary enterprise, eloquently discussed\u2014for the American case\u2014in Buell’s work, cited above.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n As one familiar with the poetic \u0153uvre of Anjela Duval (1905-1981), I have long been struck with her love of nature and with environmental issues, and in contemplating Buell’s defining characteristics of environmental writing, I realized that by these criteria Duval clearly merits inclusion in any honor roll of \u201c green poets, \u201d though I would guess that, given her life circumstances on a relatively isolated farm in pays tregorrois, she had little awareness of the environmental movement in literature that was gaining momentum elsewhere.<\/p>\n While Duvalian scholars have certainly been appreciative of this poet’s sensitivity to nature, more attention has been paid to her as a nationalist poet and as an inspiration for several generations of Breton activists who have sought greater political and economic autonomy and a cultural\/linguistic renewal for Brittany. Only recently has she been characterized as an ecological poet before her time.[3]<\/a> I believe this is fundamentally correct, and her understanding of the importance of preserving healthy ecosystems (though she did not employ such language) is manifested in a number of her poems that, in an earlier work of mine, I categorized as \u201c social criticism \u201d\u2014which it was.[4]<\/a> However, it has become even more evident in the most recent collection of Duval’s poetry[5]<\/a>\u2014much of it previously unpublished\u2014that eco-environmental themes were very prominent in Duval’s thinking and ultimately in her poetic expression. She rightly deserves a place among other 20 thc. writers who have modeled an environmental critique in their poetry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What I will do in this essay is to highlight the environmental and nature dimensions of Duval’s poetry, drawing occasional parallels to three prominent North American poets who are admired for their compelling handling of ecological\/environmental themes, and human-nature interactions\u2014Robinson Jeffers, Mary Oliver, and Wendell Berry.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n Of course, Duval was also a \u201c nature poet \u201d in the more traditional sense of one who paid attention to, and honored, nonhuman creatures, natural forces, and landscapes, and some of her most exquisite poems in my opinion fall under this rubric. Like the New England poet, Mary Oliver, Duval also had a genius for \u201c bringing nature into focus through painted particulars, \u201d as one critic has written of Oliver’s work.[7]<\/a> The pertinence of this remark is evident in Oliver’s \u201c Goldenrod \u201d: \u201c on roadsides,\/ in fall fields,\/ in rumpy bunches,\/ saffron and orange and pale gold,\/ in little towers\/ soft as mash,\/ sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers,\/ full of bees and yellow beads and perfect flowerlets\u2026 \u201d Similarly, Duval’s \u201c An Delio\u00f9 Kenta\u00f1 \u201d (\u201c First Leaves \u201d) offers a verbal water-color of the subtle hues in early spring foliage to be discerned by the careful observer:<\/p>\n Sunday they were still gray<\/em><\/p>\n And their branches naked,<\/em><\/p>\n The row of poplar trees<\/em><\/p>\n So tall and so thin<\/em><\/p>\n On the edge of the meadow,<\/em><\/p>\n Contemplating their image,<\/em><\/p>\n In the dark water of the Leger.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2014Today they’ve changed color.<\/em><\/p>\n They’re neither pink nor yellow,<\/em><\/p>\n Nor are they at all green,<\/em><\/p>\n It’s a subtle shade, known only<\/em><\/p>\n To the Great Painter\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Tender, delicate and fragile,<\/em><\/p>\n Like an idea germinating<\/em><\/p>\n in the mind of a child [8]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In \u201c Dibreder \u201d (\u201c Carefree \u201d) Duval paints a \u201c rural tableau \u201d that deftly depicts the lush countryside near her farm and also captures the subtle but characteristic behavior of dairy cows at rest:<\/p>\n A border of flowering broom<\/em><\/p>\n A golden sea gently undulating<\/em><\/p>\n Carefree in the shade of an oak tree<\/p>\n Three cows stretched out on the grass<\/em><\/p>\n Ruminating greens and dreams<\/em><\/p>\n Now and again an ear is raised <\/em><\/p>\n Just like a fan<\/em><\/p>\n To flick away a fly<\/em><\/p>\n sucking rheum in the corner of their eyes. [9]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Within the plant kingdom, trees reigned supreme for Duval. She knew, as deeply rooted peoples do, all the plant species in her territory, but she particularly delighted in writing about trees. She ends one poem that wonders how she came to love trees so much from early childhood\u2014\u201c When I caressed their bark\/ With my babyish hand.\/ When I glued my ear against them\/ To listen to the rustling of their leaves \u201d\u2014with the speculation that \u201c Perhaps I was a tree\/ at the beginning of time\u2026 \u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n In another poem, \u201c Er C’hoad \u201d (\u201c In the Forest \u201d) she revels in reciting the \u201c magical names \u201d of the trees to be found there, which seem to cast a sort of spell over her: \u201c White-oak. Forest-aspen\/Maple. Hornbeam\/ Black-alder. Willow. White Birch.\/ \/My thousand mute friends. \u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n Duval’s affection for all creatures, animal or plant, certainly motivated many of her poems, but this poet was also driven by a powerful sense of the destructive forces of the technologies and global economic expansions of the 20thc., not only in terms of their potential for devastation of traditional ways of human life\u2014including the rural existence she had known as a small farmer\u2014but also for their effect on wildlife and landscapes. Some of her environmental poetry is anything but pastoral, manifesting instead a horror at the discontinuity she saw unfolding between humans and nature, as people became increasingly detached from their rural roots and traditions. In a tone akin to that of a number of Robinson Jeffers’ poems, Duval not infrequently blasted away at the rottenness of cities, viewed not only as pits of decadence but as destroyers of the natural countryside. Jeffers, who lived in the mountains above the central California coast was disgusted by the incursion of suburbs into once remote countryside, along with the sprawl of cities. In \u201c Carmel Point \u201d he sighs,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The extraordinary patience of things!<\/em><\/p>\n This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban <\/em>houses<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>How beautiful when we first beheld it,<\/em><\/p>\n Unbroken field of poppy and lupine walled with clean <\/em>cliffs;<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,<\/em><\/p>\n Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop <\/em>rockheads\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>Now the spoiler has come: does it care?<\/em><\/p>\n Not faintly.[12]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Part V of a longer poem, \u201c The Broken Balance \u201d, Jeffers mourns \u201c \u2026the broken balance, the hopeless prostration of the\/earth\/Under men’s hands and their minds,\/The beautiful places killed like rabbits to make a city\/The spreading fungus, the slime-threads\/And spores; my own coast’s obscene future\u2026 \u201d[13]<\/a><\/p>\n Duval’s \u201c spreading fungus \u201d was Paris. For example, in the dissonant closing lines of an otherwise nostalgic and pastoral poem, \u201c Lec’h Va C’havell\u201d (\u201cMy Cradle’s Place \u201d), this most famous of French cities is metaphorized as an anthropophagic monster:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My cradle’s spot is my little kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n I was born one day<\/em><\/p>\n When the narcissus bloomed<\/em><\/p>\n I was born in the countryside<\/em><\/p>\n Born on a farm<\/em><\/p>\n On a property in my mother’s line<\/em><\/p>\n In Tregor in Brittany<\/em> <\/p>\n Born in the springtime<\/p>\n At the time of down-filled nests<\/em><\/p>\n In the shelter of ivy and moss<\/em><\/p>\n At the time of foals and new lambs<\/em><\/p>\n Gamboling in the pasture<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>My pleasant green valley<\/em><\/p>\n Crossed by the black Leger<\/em><\/p>\n Bordered by the hills Runavin<\/em><\/p>\n Keravel Kerouel and Keriel.<\/em><\/p>\n in which echo so prettily<\/em><\/p>\n The tinkling bells of Tregrom’s tower\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n And the heavy feet of the Black Horse<\/em><\/p>\n Crossing day and night<\/em><\/p>\n People from Brest to Paris<\/em><\/p>\n Paris-Sodom the voracious abyss<\/em><\/p>\n That only throws up its prey at the time of the potato beetle<\/em><\/p>\n To regorge its vomit each year at the<\/em><\/p>\n \u201c Rentr\u00e9e \u201d[14]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It must be added here for readers not familiar with the history of Brittany that for many Bretons Paris represents the seat of centralized authority that has limited the region’s possibilities for economic self-regulation and cultural development; and has also been the destination for many generations of Breton \u00e9migr\u00e9s seeking work, for want of opportunity in their native region. This siphoning off of the younger cohorts of Bretons over the years further contributed, historically, to the stagnation of the Breton economy and of Brittany’s distinctive cultural and linguistic heritage.<\/p>\n For Duval, it was cities, too, that sent out the hordes of tourists who, especially in the summertime, would overrun and disrupt her beautiful countryside, showing little or no respect for its inhabitants, human and nonhuman alike. Her poems \u201c Korriganed \u201d (\u201c Elves \u201d) and \u201c An Douristed \u201d (\u201c The Tourists \u201d) speak to this theme (portions of each poem follow):<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Elves<\/em><\/p>\n A people of elves<\/em><\/p>\n A degenerate people<\/em><\/p>\n A genocidal people<\/em><\/p>\n Drowned in red wine<\/em><\/p>\n Drowned in French pom-pom<\/em><\/p>\n And in political slogans<\/em><\/p>\n A people resembling Elves<\/p>\n Playfully amusing themselves<\/em><\/p>\n In the abandoned heaths<\/em><\/p>\n Dancing among the megaliths<\/em><\/p>\n To the sound of the toads<\/em><\/p>\n To the mysterious music<\/em><\/p>\n Of the wind and the sea<\/em><\/p>\n The lament of the streams<\/em><\/p>\n The rustling of the woods [15]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n The Tourists<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n They make me laugh<\/em><\/p>\n \u2014when they don’t infuriate me\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n They are seeking, they say, tranquility<\/em><\/p>\n To rest from the noise of the cities.<\/em><\/p>\n Yet I no longer hear throughout the day<\/em><\/p>\n My winged companions<\/em><\/p>\n Nor deep in his crevice<\/em><\/p>\n My friend the cricket<\/em><\/p>\n In each corner of the village: a clamor<\/em><\/p>\n The racket of stinking cars<\/em><\/p>\n The din of transistor radios [16]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Duval’s utter contempt for mindless tourists is transparent; yet she was not (unlike Jeffers most of the time) convinced of the baseness of humanity. Rather, as a devout Catholic, she believed in the possibility of redemption, and used her poetic voice, in part, to encourage, or, more often, to admonish others to pay attention to what was going on around them and to engage in more positive interaction with the environment, just as she attempted in many of her poems to rouse Bretons from their political apathy. Indeed, the two themes are almost inextricably intertwined, for she understood the \u201c dismantling of Brittany \u201d as an ecosystem to be, in large measure, the result of her compatriots’ submissive assimilation to French culture and language.<\/p>\n The ecosystem she sees disappearing and in favor of which she writes so passionately is one in which human beings are deeply embedded. Hers is not the vision of a primal wilderness, but of a caring and knowledgeable interaction between human and nonhuman on a beloved territory. That is, her ecological vision is of a small farmer living in harmony with the denizens of a humanized landscape. This is her ideal, but she sees it slipping away year by year as the young leave Brittany, especially its rural sectors, as outsiders settle in, and as construction of new roads and houses moves implacably forward. In a particularly stirring poem published in the most recent anthology of her work, Duval creates an unforgettable image of the destruction of one of the hallmarks of the Breton landscape\u2014its bocages,[17]<\/a> embankments covered with a thick growth of trees, shrubs, and vines that separate fields, that serve as habitat for dozens of animal species, and that may self-regenerate indefinitely.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Bocage<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n \u2014\u201c A shiver runs<\/em><\/p>\n Down my thorny back<\/em><\/p>\n Stiffening on my head<\/em><\/p>\n My hair of tangled brambles<\/em><\/p>\n My last hour has sounded<\/em><\/p>\n All over my miseries of this World<\/p>\n The earth shakes. The trees tremble<\/em><\/p>\n But what do I see? It isn’t Ankou! [18]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n But a huge devil with claws<\/em><\/p>\n Coming to tear me apart, to behead me<\/em><\/p>\n The red Bulldozer with its giant step<\/em><\/p>\n To bury me in the ditch. \u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u2014\u201c Ah! may the steel of your claws be<\/em><\/p>\n [marked<\/em><\/p>\n With the pure blood of my roots;<\/em><\/p>\n Like the hand of an executioner<\/em><\/p>\n With the blood of a martyr!<\/em><\/p>\n While my soul will fly lightly<\/em><\/p>\n In the mantel of my dust:<\/em><\/p>\n A cloud carried by the breeze<\/em><\/p>\n High high above the hillside,<\/em><\/p>\n Toward\u2026 a Paradise:<\/em><\/p>\n Paradise of old bocages\u2026 [19]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n This theme recurs in her poems, for she understands, as she says in one of them, that the bocages are important not only in Brittany, but serve as \u201c the framework of the Celtic Countries. \u201dBrittany’s Eco-Muse
\n <\/strong>in Comparative Perspective<\/strong><\/h3>\n