게리 스나이더의 심층 생태학적 사유에 대한 연구

Abstract

This paper aims to examine Gary Snyder’s deep ecological thoughts and vision through a close reading of his poems and essays. The analysis of his works will show Snyder’s life-long efforts and practices to overcome the ecological crisis as “a spokesman for wild nature.” Snyder blames Judeo-Christian anthropocentrism, rationalism and dualism of Western culture, techno-science civilization, and capitalism as the main culprit of unprecedented human destruction of nature and the on-going environmental disaster. Judeo-Christian anthropocentrism allows mankind unlimited warrant to exploit and use nature for the sake of human comfort and development. The arrogant tradition of anthropocentrism and excessive rationalism justifies and reinforces the dominance of humans over nature and makes humans pursue self-interest above all. In the Native American culture, in the Zen Buddhism, and in the Paleolithic society, Snyder seeks solutions that can stop more severe environmental destruction and save both mankind and nature from potential ecological catastrophes. In particular, Snyder pursues the interdependence and the coexistence of humans and all life forms in nature from the Buddha’s central doctrine of Causality, or dependent co-arising. He also emphasizes the interconnectedness of all beings in the world since nothing exists in isolation, independent of other life. Therefore, all the beings exist in mutually supplementary relationship. More significantly, Snyder shares the interconnectedness of all living beings on a biological level as shown in the food chain and food-web. Snyder puts bioregionalism and reinhabitation movement into practice in the Turtle Island, which is North America originally named by Native Americans in order to realize the ideal life-community where man and nature co-exist. Chapter I examines the poems which warn us of ecological disaster. In Myths and Texts and Turtle Island, Snyder criticizes the modern civilization for devastating Mother Nature. Chapter Ⅱ deals with the alternative course of the ecological crisis. Snyder tries to seek the solution in Native American’s myths and the Zen Buddhism. In the sequence of “Burning,” he shows the interconnectedness and interpenetration of all beings and ecological food-web as figured in the image of Indra’s net. In chapter Ⅲ, poems showing ecological democracy in the ideal life community are analyzed in detail. In Turtle Island, Snyder depicts the interdependency and co-existence of human and nonhuman nature in an ideal life-community. In conclusion, Snyder shows in his poems and essays the symbiotic relationship between man and nature. He is practicing the ecocentric egalitarianism that draws us to reject the human’s privilege over nature and respect all beings including humans in their own right as parts of the whole without hierarchies of species.