Gary Snyder and the Nature of Nature

This paper suggests an interpretation of Snyder's 'nature' poetry or poetics of 'wildness' that foregrounds the interplay of virtual image and real essence, since the truly 'wild' or genuinely 'natural' cannot, after all, be represented: it can only be caught in the brushstroke of the real-virtual interplay or difference. This interpretation foregrounds Lao Tzu's zi-ran (nature, self-so-ness, spontaneity) - especially as we get it in Tao Te Ching 25, where it is mentioned that Tao fa zi-ran, 'Tao/Dao follows (is conditioned by and modelled on) zi-ran'. This interpretation equally foregrounds Zen Buddhist (non-) duality or interplay of (virtual) form and (real) emptiness, and particularly emphasizes Lacan's concept of the (unrepresentable) Real. The context of this Real is a desire (taken here as Lao Tzu's spontaneous self-reversal or self-return) that has only itself as object, a desire that only reproduces itself and thus is essentially a 'lack' (manque). The author is hence suggesting that we see Snyder's ecopoetic (non-) duality of representation-as-form and represented-as-object as an interplay between an empty desire-as-representation and an empty desire-as-represented, or between the nature of nature and the nature of nature.