Mother Nature and Poetry: A Lacanian Reading of the Role of Nature in Light, Flowers,Water, and I by Sohrab Sepehri and Lines Written in Early Spring by William Wordsworth

In this comparative study of Light, Flowers, Water, and I by Sepehri and Lines Written in Early Spring by Wordsworth, the role of Nature as objet petit a is examined. AlthoughSepehri and Wordsworth are geographically and temporally distant from each other, Nature plays a very important role in their lives and poetry. Both poets have been hailed as bards of nature, and the romanticism inherent in their works is often interpreted as resulting from the masters’ optimistic outlook towards nature. This article aims to show that the poets see Nature as objet petit a, a portal to the Imaginary Order, and try to preserve the bliss attained from this object of desire by using language, the necessary means of communication in the Symbolic Order. The Imaginary Order comes first, and it is the world wherein mother reigns supreme. In it, the human beings experience a sublime wholeness, a oneness with the mother, that is second to none and of which they are sure. But this bliss comes to an end with the passage into the Symbolic Order. With the introduction of the name of the father, this oneness with the mother is taken away, and the child feels a gaping hole instead of wholeness. He is no longer one with his surroundings, and because of this separation, he has to resort to language to express himself. Thus, language use has inherent within itself a fundamental loss; that is, the loss of the mother and the haven she entailed. Looking for their lost mothers, humans take refuge in objet petit a, but these substitutes never prove completely satisfactory since the desire for them embodies the original loss of the mother. In the two poems by Sepehri and Wordsworth, the poets revel in the simple pleasures they have been able to glean from Nature, but their apparent ease is tinted with the shadow of loss. Analyzing this undercurrent though a Lacanian lens, one may assert that Nature acts as objet petit a for the narrators. As the narrators proceed to relate their union with Mother Nature, their lack seeps through the lines to show that Nature’s restorative powers are not all-inclusive. In further analysis, the article investigates how the poems act as a means through which the narrators express their yearning for the Imaginary Order, articulating a lack they themselves have given rise to. The fact that they need a medium in order to express their pain shows how escape from this loss is impossible; thus, while turning their attention to Nature, and devoting their careers to singing her praise, they nonetheless fail to be thoroughly healed by her.

کلیدواژه ها:

Imaginary Order ، Nature ، Objet petit a ، Symbolic Order