Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
There are many wonderfully written passages where the joined rhythms of men, harvest, and nature are strongly evoked as industrialisation encroaches at the beginning of the 20th century.
Your second book is The Rainbow by D H Lawrence.
I chose this for two reasons. The first is because it takes you into the 20th century and it shows how the encroachment of industrialisation had an affect on the English landscape. D H Lawrence was the son of a miner and knew about all the workings of mines. But perhaps more importantly, it’s about a family. The men in that family are still close to the land while the women look outwards for knowledge, and look towards the future. Lawrence writes the most wonderful passages, even in the opening pages.
‘Heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, and falling back, leaves the young-born on the earth… Their life and interrelations were such; feeling the pulse and body of the soil…’ ‘So much warmth and generating and pain and death did they know in their blood, earth and sky and beast and green plants…’
So here, you see, we have the rawness of nature and the complete interdependence of humans with the land.
What sorts of things does Lawrence feel led to changes in the relationship between humans and nature?
Well in The Rainbow it was the encroachment of mines, iron works and the early industrialisation process on the land. In fact the family’s farm is eventually cut off completely, by a canal and they are left isolated. And the book takes you through the next 20 years or so of their lives.
How are the themes of the book reflected in your own life and what you do for the Optimum Population Trust?
Once you have lived beyond the age of about 45 I think you can see what has happened to the landscape – you can feel what has happened to the atmosphere and the weather. So you can actually see the changes within your own lifetime. And of course the changes since the time of D H Lawrence have moved even faster.
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Rosamund McDougall is a policy director for the Optimum Population Trust, a think-tank established in 1991 to examine the impact of human population on its environment. She has been campaigning on population issues since the 1970s. She spent time in Borneo: ‘The jungle was teaming, throbbing with life, ranging from the most glorious birds to orang-utans. The word orang-utan is actually Malay for man of the forest. So it brings you close to the idea that humans are animals living in this environment. But sadly a lot of the area has been destroyed because of logging and the rainforest is threatened.’ If we don’t reduce our impact on the environment by population control the results will be catastrophic, she says.
