Terror, Error or Refuge: Forests in Western Literature

The forest in Western literature and culture has often been perceived as existing in Manichean opposition to civilization, enlightenment or even morality. A history—both psychological and social—of this tradition is offered in Robert Pogue Harrison’s compelling book, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (1992). Forests, according to Jungian psychology, generally symbolize the unconscious (Bishop 1995: 309; Progoff 1992:44); they are often full of frightening uncertainties and real dangers, reminding humans of the distant past of their species, when absence of rational understanding of the natural world left them at the mercy of cruel and mysterious forces. Since both Europe and North America were originally thickly wooded (Holmes 2000:83), forests were the cluttered and darkened spaces that had to be cleared in order to let in enlightenment and build the courtly city. Harrison cites as his earliest literary example the ancient epic of Gilgamesh, whose protagonist’s first heroic act is to defeat the forest demon Huwawa, an action that represents the cutting down of a sacred cedar forest (Harrison 1992:14-18). According to Harrison, this destructive act has been endlessly repeated in Western history in order to protect civilization, for the forest is the Nietzschean home of Dionysos, the god of frenzy and dismemberment; it is the ‘abyss of precivic darkness from which civilization is merely a deviation, and a precarious one at that’ (1992:38). If future humans are to set about reversing the damage done by deforestation of the planet, this view of the forest will perhaps need to be revised